


The Garden

by rjosettes



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Asexual Character, F/M, Pack Feels, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-01 17:24:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5214401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rjosettes/pseuds/rjosettes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Marin calls Lydia to help around Beacon Hills, witch population: approximately 3.5, she's not impressed. When the whole place goes to hell in a handbasket a few weeks later, she's ready to close out accounts and get out of dodge. Townspeople are dropping like flies, amnesia spreading as fast as the flu might, and that's not even touching the ones who wander out of the preserve with no grasp on reality. She's agreed to help the McCall pack, though, and Lydia makes a habit of never breaking a promise, especially to other witches and shifters.</p><p>Derek Hale is both.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Garden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [symphorine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/symphorine/gifts).



> Had a great time writing this for Fall Harvest! There's a bit of a spoilery warning in the bottom notes for anyone sensitive to character death.

Most of Lydia's work in Beacon Hills, up until the McCall Pack calls her, is routine. Marin wasn't kidding when she said that property prices were dropping like stones. She dissipates residual energies from pre-owned homes three and four times a week, watching families marvel at the relatively huge amount of elbow room in the dirt cheap three-bedroom houses after years in tiny apartments. Her own reaction to the smaller place she's renting is similar; there's even the luxury of a basement for light-sensitive work, doing away with the need of sealing up all the windows and doorways of a whole bedroom that could be put to another use. Most of the houses have little to no negative energy, and what she does find is often a living human darkness - the angry scribble of infidelity and divorce, the bloom of resentment and rebellion from teenagers. It would take years and intentional feeding to cause any trouble, but she wipes it away for them all the same and accepts her standard price.

Occasionally, she gets visits in the front room thanks to the sign hanging at her door. Her experience in divination at large is little, but the town's not well-served, magically, and the people will take what they can get. She refreshes her familiarity with her decks and stocks up on the herbs for various teas - some to read and some to drink, often both. It's her first hint that something else is going on here in Beacon Hills. The Etsy shop she finds an extensive inventory at is local, and her package arrives on her welcome mat with no markings from the postal service and no return address. None of the products feel out of the ordinary, other than some being a little heartier than she'd imagine for the season, so she writes it off and accepts small favors. The tea will be made; that's all that matters.

Only once does she see someone for something other than ritual cleansing or a quick peek into possible future paths. The woman is young, her own age, but she comes seeking remedy for persistent fatigue. Lydia almost writes her off as an average graduate student looking for an edge. Her laugh is secret, like a private joke, when she assures Lydia that it isn't the result of pregnancy. She doesn't look tired, not in the way she holds herself or in her clear, determined eyes. Her hand is shaken with fine tremors when Lydia asks for it, though, and she seems to be at the end of her rope. She pays in cash from a very healthy wallet and thanks Lydia profusely without wavering into actual friendliness. It's a strange encounter, so strange that it doesn't occur to her until later that she hadn't caught the woman's name. If only her psychometry studies had been productive, she might've found a little intrigue in this seemingly sleepy town.

If it hadn't been for Marin, the whole of Beacon County would've remained a blank spot in Lydia's experience. It's small in the grand scale of things. Upon further research, their unsolved murder cases are higher than usual for a mostly suburban area, and the weather patterns are somewhat out of the ordinary. Rainier than the rest of California could possibly hope for, lightning storms that strike in extremely isolated spurts without traveling on. Strange, but not inherently magical, and not something she'd have been interested in on her own. Marin's own interest in the place had been troubling a few years back when she'd announced that she'd be moving there, leaving behind her coven and the students she'd taken on. Lydia didn't take kindly to being left under Jessica Bernard's tutelage and took to solitary practice, putting to work all of the research skills she'd once hoped to dedicate to graduate chemistry. For nearly a month, there'd been no clear reason that Beacon Hills needs her more than any town in America might need a witch.

The alpha of a local werewolf pack calls on a Wednesday, knocking politely at the door for customers rather than the front. Scott McCall is young, soft of face but sturdy in his body. She sweeps aside the line of mountain ash that protects her doorway, leaving the secondary salt defense intact as he steps inside. “I'm sorry to bother you,” is what he leads with, and Lydia tries to imagine how someone so yielding came to run a pack. Wolves, for what she knows of them, are hierarchical and territorial to a fault. Someone, she assumes, died and left him in charge – a sort of unearned respect by default.

“What can I help you with?” she asks him as he takes a seat at her table, his fingers curiously reaching for the small crystal ball at its center. It shocks him away before he can taint it, of course, and he jumps back, bewildered. “Precautions. I don't even use it that much, but the more strangers touch it, the more often I have to take the time to cleanse it or spend the money to buy a new one.”

“Sorry,” he says again, sheepish. “I was just curious. The only witches I know don't have stuff like this. Not that I know of, at least. Mason says that palm reading and tarot and stuff like that are only useful in personal decisions, not pack ones.”

“Mason is right, to a certain extent,” Lydia agrees, moving her deck to the side, in case he gets it in his head to try touching that, too. There are good reasons to have the querent touch the cards, but it doesn't sound like he's here to having something divined. “Though if the pack as a whole were to come and see me, you might be able to synthesize your results into one plan. I don't think you're here to let a little hocus pocus tell you what to do, though.”

Scott shakes his head, his smile dimming into a more grave expression. “We're dealing with something....weird, in the preserve. Something none of us have any idea what to do with. We asked Dr. Deaton's sister and she gave us your address.”

Of course Marin sent him. Lydia wonders if this had been her plan all along. Though Marin's not a diviner by practice, she has an odd way of telling when things are about to shift one way or another. If she felt things going downhill around her, she'd send for backup with any excuse she could put together, no matter how cryptic. She's going to get an earful later over trying to involve Lydia in a pack of shifters and their personal endeavors. She has nothing against the people only slightly more supernatural than her in this world, but they tend to stir up far more trouble than the average witch, and are best left to their own devices. Werewolves, she'd thought, handled their problems amongst themselves. A few of the old packs had kept druids, but almost no one was a druid these days, anyway, and they'd been more like advisers than magicians. Lydia has no stock in giving advice. She hands out information and lets people do with it as they will.

“I'm close friends with Ms. Morrell,” she admits, careful not to betray her annoyance. “She was my mentor when I was first learning the craft. I'm sure she's far more experienced with whatever problem your pack seems to be having.”

“See, it's not just my pack,” Scott begins, leaning in, elbows firmly planted on her tabletop. “I would never have thought to come see you if it was something going on with us. My friend – Mason, the one I mentioned before. He got hurt. We tried taking him to the hospital, but the problem's magical, not medical. My mom is watching him for now, but she doesn't think we'll be able to help him if we don't find out what's going on.”

Lydia considers him for a long moment – his genuine distress, the near-medical symptoms of his friend. It's likely she can help, and it's the biggest job she'll have gotten here so far. Whether she wants to establish this sort of thing is a different story altogether. “Your friend, you said he told you some things about divination. Is he a witch?”

“In training,” Scott agrees, nodding. “He was trying to look into the problem for us, even though Derek told him to stay away. Obviously he found whatever he was looking for.”

“And obviously Derek was right.” She purses her lips in thought before she nods decisively, taking out her planner. “My front room work ends at four on weekends,” she tells him, sliding her finger along the page. “And my dinner plans aren't until seven. I think I'd like to see if I can help your friend.”  
~  
Scott's mother, Melissa McCall, is a well-qualified registered nurse who seems, at best, baffled by the symptoms the young witch sleeping in her living room exhibits. “Sedation was our only option,” she tells Lydia, looking ashamed of herself for the admission. “None of us were going to chain him down and listen to him scream.”

Mason Hewitt's hyperthermia is substantial but not dangerous – just strong enough to mimic the body fighting an infection without endangering his brain or other internal organs. The other symptoms Melissa and Scott provide her with – delirium, disorientation, and other pseudo-psychological conditions – are more concerning, especially considering they were severe enough to require sedating him nearly around the clock.

“I assume someone is with him at all times?” Lydia asks, her fingers pale and cool against darker, feverish skin as she takes his pulse. “This level of maintained sedation needs to be monitored closely. I'd prefer to offer you a magical alternative, if I can't solve this for you today.”

“Oh, it is magical,” Scott tells her, his hand on the sleeping boy's shoulder. He's several years younger than Scott and herself to begin with, and in peaceful sleep he very much resembles a child. It's a bit disturbing. “We ran out of what the hospital gave us, like. Two days in. Derek's been giving us what we need to keep him like this ever since. But we do watch him!” he rushes to add. “Most of us work or have school, but we try to make sure one or two of us is with him all the time. The pack's big enough that someone's usually free.”

Mason's pulse is only slightly depressed, exactly what she'd expect from a magical sedative rather than a heavy-duty dose of chemical medication. His respirations, too, are even and sufficient, far from the danger zone. From what she can tell, he's extremely well taken care of. “Mrs. McCall, would you happen to have any what he's being given? Or, even better, the ingredients? I'm going to need to briefly reverse its effects.” She opens her bag, sifting through the supplies she's bought. Most of them were intended to relieve the symptoms, but considering whatever this witch Derek made was created with the intention of suppressing them, she just might have what she needs anyway. “Scott, I'm going to need your help, as well. He'll need to be held still for a while until we can sedate him again.”

The McCalls' kitchen is neat in a way that speaks to not being used very often, which is perfect for Lydia's needs. The potion being used to sedate the patient is simple enough, a scant few ingredients that happen to be remarkably potent when combined. The witch who made it has a deep understanding of both the magical and medical properties of plants and minerals. With her own containers and utensils, she's able to use the stove and boil up an antidote, rapidly cooling it to room temperature in their freezer afterward. She carefully uses an eyedropper to add one last touch to the mix and reappears in the living room still wearing her gloves with the result.

“I won't keep him up longer than five minutes,” she promises, pulling the chair provided by Scott up to the edge of the pullout couch. “We'll put him back down with the same thing you've been giving him, and everything should be fine. I just need to ask him a few questions about what happened to him. It's the best solution we have.” Scott looks wary, but places his hands more firmly against Mason's upper body, ready to hold him in place if he fights.

Melissa has more experience with administering oral medications in these situations, and she helps Lydia force down enough to work, expression equally as apologetic as her son's. They're caring people by nature, protectors, and she wonders if she wouldn't have been wiser to have them call other members of their pack to help with this. Judging by his symptoms, whatever happens next is likely to be traumatizing to such sensitive people for whom the problem is close to home.

It takes a full three minutes – as expected – to work. Scott's muscles tense before Lydia can sense any movement at all, and then Mason is gasping awake, heels digging in to press his body into a high arch as he struggles against being weighed down. His eyes are frantic, scanning the room and not finding the threat he expects until they land on Lydia leaning over him.

“Oh God,” are the first words from his mouth, not panicked so much as knowing. “Oh God, not now, not yet, I didn't tell them, I didn't tell Liam, I didn't tell Scott.” Scott opens his mouth to respond and Lydia holds up a hand, a pang of regret traveling through her when Mason lies flat, cowering away from it. “I should've waited, I shouldn't have touched it, they're going to touch it and it's going to be my fault.”

“What did you touch?” Lydia asks him, voice clear as she leans further into his line of view. It's a mistake; Mason looks as though he might faint beneath her, frozen in fear. “Mason, what did you touch?”

“The preserve,” he whispers, eyes wide. “It's in the preserve, they're all going to be in the preserve, they're going to touch it, they can't touch it, don't take me or they won't know.”

It hits Lydia with full force, then, as she remembers that Mason isn't seeing what he might see with his normal waking eyes. She gestures to Melissa quickly for the sedative, a scream of fear turned to a gurgle as Mason chokes on it, fighting at full strength as Scott grits his teeth and tightens his hold. It takes five minutes for him to rest, five minutes in which Lydia backs away as far as she safely can. His eyes follow her anyway, gaze fixed somewhere between awe and terror, until he finally drifts to sleep.

“Well,” Lydia says, hoarse with restrained emotion. “Whatever it is, it's in the preserve. And I'd recommend you not enter it again until this is...seen to.” She swallows, gathering her things by rote until she's all packed. “I can have a look for you, but without being sure if it's a creature, an enchantment, some sort of portal... It's hard to make any promises. It might help if I could speak to some more people who've visited the preserve. On a regular basis, if possible.”

Scott looks shaken, but his mother speaks up for him, carefully pulling his fingers away from Mason's clothes. “Scott can take you to Derek. The preserve is his home, basically. If anybody knows what's normal out there and what isn't, he's your man.” Scott nods weakly, finally turning to look at Lydia, confusion bordering on suspicion coloring his features.

Lydia mentally scans the upcoming week, trying to focus her thoughts through her own upset. “I don't have a car,” she says, feeling numb as she takes out her phone. “Thursday afternoon is open for me, but I'll need a ride.”

Things are settled quickly, and Lydia walks home, turning down another trip in Scott's car when they're no more than a few blocks from one another. Beacon Hills is a small place with a big problem. She lets herself into her house, carefully laying a fresh line of mountain ash behind her before she puts away her house call supplies. Without sparing even a glance for her fridge, appetite having vanished into thin air, she uses the key around her neck to unlock her basement. The deep dark begins no more than a few feet in, and she takes the stairs carefully until she reaches the bottom and feels her way to her lamp.

In the dim light, she surveys her latest research in all its disarray, the one place she allows herself to keep a mess. Jars of grave dirt, bird and bat bones, belladonna and oleander. Raven feathers collected over long months, both naturally and over the web, never more than one or two at a time. Endless attempts at perfect circles, black candles burnt down to stubs, shards of coffin wood that she can still feel under her fingernails if she isn't careful.

Lydia knows what Mason saw when he woke to her face, and she knows that not all of it was a fever dream. But she's not yet what he thought she was. She has far more work to do.

She opens her grimoire and begins another night.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

When the police car rolls up next to Lydia's drive, she panics for a second, admittedly. Nothing she's done here in Beacon Hills is illegal, per se, but your average civilian has a certain wariness for the law to begin with. From behind her Invisiblinds charm, she peeks out and watches the driver's side door ease open. The woman in khaki climbing out is familiar from the first moment, but when she flips her wavy ponytail away from her face, Lydia can see it's the customer who came after a potion shortly after she moved in. The night shift must've been hitting her pretty hard.

She waits a respectable amount of time before opening her door when the knock comes. “Afternoon, officer,” she says brightly, hoping there's a hint of dimple in her smile. Whether there is or not, it's nothing on the dimples the deputy flashes at her in return.

“I'm here as a favor to a friend,” she explains. “So it's Allison, not Deputy Argent. Scott told me you needed a ride to the Hale house. Patrolling past the preserve can't hurt.”

Lydia's go bag is packed and ready, of course, and she's not in handcuffs, so everything must be above board. It's her first time in a police car; riding in the front is not very much different than any other vehicle she's gotten around in over the years. The police radio stays full blast for convenience because Deputy Argent – Allison – isn't a were. The lack of music to manufacture a cover for any awkward silence is an annoyance, but not one she can't handle.

“You seem chipper,” she offers, hands folded in her lap, ignoring the way the seat belt splits her chest in two and ruins her outfit. She's going to be wrinkled to hell and back by the time they get where they're going, but the law doesn't care that she can magically brace for impact far better than any seat belt could manage. “I'm guessing you got your money's worth from me?”

Allison's hands stay at nine and three, her eyes attentive to the road, but she nods. “It's been a little better. I have a lot on my plate between the pack, my job, and my dad. I've always been fine on just a little sleep, but I guess getting older is sneaking up on me.” Her smile is easy, unforced, and she glances to Lydia. “We'd be about the same age, wouldn't we? I'm twenty-six.”

“Twenty-five,” Lydia agrees. “My mother says I'm two years off from starting to lie about my age. I told her as long as I have magic, I won't have to. My face will take care of it for me.”

“You don't think that's cheating?” There's no hint of teasing in her voice that Lydia can detect, and she worries for a second that she's encountered a member of one of the few remaining anti-magic communities. There are no religious symbols around her neck or hanging on her rearview mirror, but that doesn't mean much anymore. There are plenty of other folks not interested in suffering a witch to live. “I mean, no more cheating than people like Scott, but still. You have to give us all a fair shot.”

Lydia's stomach unknots just a bit. “People like you can come and see people like me, if they're that interested,” she points out. “You won't need it for a long time, though. It's all in the skin. No one's going to mistake you for an old maid yet.”

Laughing, Allison takes one hand off the wheel, the flash of a diamond waving in Lydia's direction. “Not a maid, at least. On top of the job and the pack, I'm also planning a wedding. 'Marriage equality', they said. 'Everyone is equal'. I dare them to try arranging a wedding for two Bridezillas.”

They ride in a more comfortable silence for a while, the streets full of houses fading into a stretch of trees, thicker the further along they go. Her eyes scan the forest for anything out of the ordinary, but having never been much of a green witch, she wouldn't be sure what to look for even if she'd lived here her whole life. There seems to be a good bit of brush for things to hide in, and alternating sunny and shady patches, which narrows down approximately nothing. It's probably not reliant on a body of water, whatever it is, but that's all she's got.

“You keep mentioning the pack. And your friend, Mason, he's just a fledgling witch. Is it usual to have so many humans involved? Are you all 'married in'?” She almost asks if Mason and Scott are involved, her mind darting across the images of Scott's face as he struggled to hold the boy without hurting him. It's none of her business, though, and it isn't what she wants to know. “I read that werewolves are usually pretty elitist. Born over bitten, bitten over witches, and humans at the bottom.”

Allison turns off onto a nearly imperceptible drive, small stones marking the way. Easily spotted by those who've been there before, but perfect for not drawing attention from passersby. This witch might be of help to her yet. The car slows to a crawl, and Allison undoes her seatbelt as they approach an expansive two-story house, confusing her senses with energies both new and old. “Our alpha is bitten.” They pull to a stop and Lydia struggles with her own seatbelt latch until Allison lays a hand over hers to help. “This one's a little tricky. I don't normally have a partner. Beacon Hills is perpetually low on cops.” She smiles and squeezes Lydia's hand once more before she's gracefully pushing herself from the car with not a word more about Scott or their pack. Lydia sighs and totes her bag up to the porch, affronted when Allison simply lets herself in.

“Derek!” she calls, hands on her hips as she paces around the foyer, checking into the adjoining rooms. “Wash your hands and come meet the cavalry!”

“You don't have to yell,” a voice says calmly from behind them, and Lydia spins on the spot. The dark-haired man in the doorway throws a dirt-smudged hand towel over his shoulder, shit-eating grin on his face as he looks at Allison. “I heard you pull up.” His gaze drops to waist level and snaps back again abruptly.

“Sorry,” Allison blurts, hand over her face in embarrassment. “Sorry, I forgot. I'd normally lose my job if I left it in the car when I was carrying a passenger.” The man waves it off, shaking his head, and Lydia realizes it's the gun they're talking about. Allison's service weapon. “I can leave it in here, if we're going through to the greenhouse or the garden.”

He considers it for a moment, then shakes again. “I don't have anything to worry about from an Argent with a gun anymore,” he jokes, though there's a hint of uneasiness in his manner. “I'm Derek,” he adds, an afterthought, without turning his full attention to Lydia. “I think it's better if we go out the front. That's the direction Mason was headed in before...”

“Before his symptoms started,” Lydia interjects. “I'm Lydia Martin.”

“I know. You made a bulk order to me earlier this month. I'll be expecting a review, by the way. Word of mouth isn't quite as effective in a town with a handful of witches who all know each other.” It's impossible to tell whether he's joking by the look on his face, and Lydia feels uncomfortably like she's having another first day of school as a grown woman – pinned to the spot and not sure how she'll be received. She plasters on her biggest, fakest smile for him and watches for a reaction. Instead, he sweeps his arm towards the door, ushering them out ladies first. It takes everything she has not to look over her shoulder as she goes.

He leads them out to the tree line, the undergrowth mostly undisturbed. There's no path to show that the pack or their associates takes any particular route through the woods. They stop a few yards along in a large gap between two towering trees, somewhat charred at the trunks. It's an old wound, a decade or more, so nothing to do with their current situation, but she wonders all the same.

“He went in here,” Derek says, certain. “Heading southeast toward the spring. Don't think he made it. A runner found him on the hiking trail, or we might not have known until we noticed he wasn't where he should be.” There's regret in his voice, like that's somehow his own fault. “There's nothing dangerous in this part of the preserve that Mason wouldn't know how to handle. He'd have had to...” He trails off, glancing down to his shoes and the neat line of tended grass turning to forest brush.

Allison nods sharply, capturing Derek's meaning perfectly and happy to leave it obscure to Lydia. “So it's something that's migrated here. It's the wrong season for things to be migrating in, though, especially to here. I'll ask Kira if she and her mother know anything about forest kitsune, to cover our bases, but I doubt they can cause what Mason's dealing with. Tricksters act with purpose. Mason is...”

“Mindless,” Derek finishes. “No, this is nothing like the flies, you're right. More of us would be sick now if it were. I'll let Stiles know he can rest easy.”

The entire conversation is Greek to Lydia, barring the fact that she knows Greek far better than these two likely do. What she does know is that Derek (Hale?) is confident in his knowledge of the property, and they can rule out the local flora, fauna, and supernatural persons in their list of possibles. “Have you had erratic magical activity here before?” she asks, reaching to touch the highest mark the flames left on the tree nearest her. The smoke damage reaches even higher, further than her 5'3” frame can manage. “It feels strong here, but stable. I wouldn't expect such a strong fluctuation unless someone's been meddling.” Unless Mason's been meddling, she doesn't add. Casting aspersions on their friend isn't likely to reflect too kindly on her pay for this work.

A high-pitched screeching noise cuts Derek off mid-word and Allison leaps to attention, sprinting out to her car to attend to her police radio. “Tuned to her biometrics,” he notes. “Even the police are in the market for magic these days.” The curl of his voice around the words is tight, bitter. Not what she'd expect from someone who allows a sheriff's deputy to walk in and out of his house without knocking. He turns fully to her for the first time and she finds that his eyes are remarkably clear, soft green with flecks of gold. If they were stones, she'd have taken them home to keep and to use; she’d enjoy a little more cash flow in and less out. “The magic here goes back centuries, and it's tied pretty strongly to the pack. Mine, before, and Scott's now. We're as stable as we're ever going to get.”

“Pagans?” she asks, seeking any hint of insult in his expression, but he simply shakes his head. “Just werewolves, then. Close to nature, magic and all.”

Allison comes jogging up, hair bobbing, apologetic frown visible from yards off. “Got a call from downtown. Sheriff wants backup and Parrish is, ah.” She glances at Lydia. “A little tied up. Do you want me to drop you back home?”

“I can take her,” Derek answers, moving to hug Allison, his broad frame dwarfing hers. “Maybe I'll even take the Camaro.”

No one asks if Lydia wants to be left alone in the woods with a strange lycanthrope possessed of magic, but she watches Allison pull off gently, careful not to leave tire ruts in the front yard as she goes. It's eerily quiet out here; she should be able to hear cars pass on the road nearby, but there's only the whisper of the leaves on the warm summer wind. Derek's footsteps are silent as he toes over the line that separates forest from clearing, led forward ear first. Lydia hesitates – if the magic is tuned to the pack, it might not be wise to trespass – but he waves her in without looking back, step by inaudible step.

She can feel the magic all around her when she crosses, and she realizes the trees are scorched because they were protecting this. The untamed land is far more heavily warded than the home where Derek seems to live, the old-new mesh easily explained if a fire got out of control. “What do you hear?” she whispers, and finds it still loud to her own human ears in the stillness.

Derek pauses, one finger up to stall her, before he turns, face falling. “Biker,” he admits, tone betraying his disappointment even further. “Off the trail. Are the paths not enough for them?”

“I imagine most people who cycle recreationally are looking for more of an all-terrain experience,” Lydia says. There's something absurd about the sentence without her usual pitch and volume to accompany it, and Derek seems to notice, eyebrows raised as he waits for any further explanation. “Just saying,” she adds defensively. “If I were a cyclist.”

“Right. You. A cyclist.” The glance down her body – hair, sundress, bare legs, embroidered flats – is perfunctory, never lingering anywhere she'd usually expect from someone that looks the way he does. It's meant to insult instead of appreciate, she's sure. “Anyway. I can take you from here to the path, if you think you might notice something, but I've walked it half a dozen times in as many days. If something were new, I think I'd have seen or felt it.”

She can feel how pinched her face has gone as she turns on her heel, careful not to slide right out of her shoes. “I'm alright, thanks. It's likely something mobile if you haven't found it yet. I'd rather not be ambushed in the woods without my-” Her shoulders slump as she sighs from her very center, exhausted. “Without my things. Deputy Argent drove downtown with my bag.”

Derek laughs, brushing past her on his way back toward the house. “I'm sure she can drop your purse off later this evening, after she's finished serving and protecting.”

Her purse. Wonderful. A strange, magical, hermetic lycanthrope with a sexist streak. She stomps behind him, careful, silent steps be damned. “If you don't mind, I'd like my ride home now.”

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

“He's a brute, Marin,” Lydia insists, unfurling the napkin that holds her utensils. “I'm not going to wander through the woods for him and wait to be put down or worse. I was hired to help Mason, not Derek. I'll just try to treat the symptoms until he can tell us the problem himself.”

Marin's perfectly groomed eyebrow arches. To this day, Lydia has no idea how old this woman is, nor how she stays so well put together without a constant magical assault from the glamouring it would take to stay so sharp. “Derek Hale, a brute? If you've discovered the secret to time travel that far back without the residual aging, I'm suing. My lawyer has connections in low places.”

She slices into her perfectly cooked chicken breast with bit more vigor than usual, the cheese oozing from the cut not as satisfying to watch as usual. “He called my working bag a purse. A purse. My house call pack. I could kill him in who knows how many ways with just what I have in that bag.”

“To be fair, if you're still using that periwinkle thing with the silver clasp, it does make you look like a mother trying to combine a purse and a diaper bag.” It's been years since they did this face to face, and she knows how to push exactly the button Lydia will be weakest to. “If that's his only crime, I'm going to have to vote no on burning him at the stake. Sorry.”

Lydia rolls her eyes hard, free to be as immature as she wants with someone who met her at seventeen. “I'm not saying he's from hell. Just that he might not be out of place there, if there's a greenhouse somewhere. He gave me his entire family history when he drove me home. He was so excited to finally have a captive audience.”

“The Hales weren't exactly small potatoes, Lydia. You might want to listen. I helped collect some of the books for the library when Derek was rebuilding the house. I'm not saying you have to make a blood pact with him. Work together, fix this sooner. Get paid. Move on. I know all that looking at sweaty hands and handing out advice online aren't putting enough money in your pocket for your expensive tastes.”

There are shoes and books and bones she needs in her life that her credit card bills just won't allow, and her mother and father won't hesitate to hover over her forever if she asks for so much as a dime. They'd give as much as she wanted, of course, but they'd take that as permission to nose their way back into her life with all their insistence that graduate school would serve her so much better than this witchcraft business. Being independent is a must in her life, and money and recommendations on this scale could make or break her time here in Beacon Hills. “I'll think about it,” she grudgingly allows, signaling the waiter for another bottle of wine. “But don't hold your breath.”

Marin smiles in that way she has – so stunningly beautiful that you wouldn't notice the cryptic quirk she gives it, some giveaway of her personal pleasure at whatever she knows that you don't. It only steels Lydia's determination to handle this without spending any more time with Derek Hale than is strictly necessary. In fact, she can probably handle this on her own entirely, with minimal help from Melissa and Mason, who would seem to know the most.

The next morning, through the haze of a wicked wine hangover, she reads an alert from a local news outlet about the handful of hikers, bikers, and campers who've been checked into BHH. Fatigue and migraines for the luckiest of patients, fever and hallucinations for the worst.

“Why did I move to the asscrack of this state?” she groans to no one in particular, rolls over, and falls back to sleep.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

The Hale library is well-kept, enough so that Lydia is constantly tempted to touch the walls and bookshelves, searching for whatever enchantment keeps this place from becoming an allergen wonderland. As it is, there's not been so much as a sneeze from any of them, settled at respectable distances along the long study table.

Stiles, who Lydia might turn out to have less patience for than Derek, is half-asleep on top of a journal kept by Derek's great-aunt, detailing the magical presences in the preserve. There doesn't appear to be a single gear between 'student cramming for finals' and 'student crashing after finals' in his research style, which is actually occasionally useful. The wee hours he spends rifling through the books and papers bother no one but Derek once Lydia is safely home, self-medicating the headache the pair of them give her.

Strangely, Derek seems to keep developing headaches as well. He's alright now, carefully studying a digital bestiary that he doesn't let Lydia come near. More than once he's complained of a tension between and behind his eyes, mostly foreign to him. He brings out a pair of reading glasses for a while, but when they only make the situation worse he hands them off to Lydia with a knowing look. She's yet to resort to them, careful to take breaks and moisten her contact lenses, but the knowing is bad enough in itself. Her mother had supplied her with contacts the moment she'd shown interest in science, dodging the bullet of goggles over glasses, and they've come in just as handy for brewing and casting. It's her vanity that's wounded now, though she isn't sure why. Derek's clothes are filthy more often than not, and Stiles blatantly eyeballs her equally no matter what she's wearing or how little sleep she's had.

The giant tome on fae that she's been skimming is turning out to be near useless. They've ruled out kitsune as a group entirely, after a stilted conference call with Kira Yukimura and her mother, Noshiko. She'd gotten the same firm brush-off when she'd questioned a fox in a wolf pack as she did when she poked at the abundance of humans involved in its workings. All she's learned is that Kira is, in fact, the second Bridezilla Allison had referenced in her patrol car, and that she's a thunder kitsune. Her mother was cryptic about her type, which Lydia recognized as a habit of the much older supernatural humans, still unused to the public nature of magic that's come in the new age. Either way, they confirmed that kitsune activity in the area wouldn't account for the symptoms cropping up in at least one or two new people per day.

Personally, Lydia is starting to suspect that she may be involved in the search for a fellow witch. Everything she's read about fae – those that interfere, at least – indicates they focus on tricks rather than outright harm. The results can be devastating, of course, but the immediate incapacitation of the victims doesn't smell of faery magic. Some of the more delirious patients have attempted violence, but others are docile and lost in fever dreams. They themselves must be the intended targets, rather than any expectation of further damage through them. It sounds very much like a human plan, and not difficult for a skilled witch to carry out. Marin and her brother, Alan, she rejects offhand as suspects; they have no reason to destroy their own livelihood in Beacon Hills. Mason, only a fledgling, wouldn't have the power to even set magic on this path, much less leave it perpetuating itself while he suffered from its effects.

“Derek,” she says, loudly enough in the quiet that Stiles jumps, looks around with wild eyes, and collapses back onto his book.

Derek chuckles quietly, reaches to drag the book from beneath him so any drool lands on the wood table instead. “Yes?”

“I need to know if your family has ever been allied to another coven. This century, last, in 1586, doesn't matter. Or if Scott's made deals with any since he became alpha.” She's poised with pen in hand to take down any names he might give. It's the sort of research she's more likely to find results in on her own, at home, and she's not taking any chances on forgetting the one detail that might crack the case open.

Instead of answering, though, he disappears behind a few shelves. It occurs to her that it would be pointless to try and follow him even if she wanted to – that silent step isn't something she's noticed in the other wolves, but Derek is inhumanly quiet as he moves, always. “I have a separate ledger for that here somewhere,” he calls to her from somewhere among the books, voice carrying just enough for her to hear. Stiles doesn't stir. “My uncle was a little obsessed with making certain we weren't in violation of any agreements.”

“He must've been a very wise witch.”

Derek reappears with a hefty, leather-bound book that's likely older than the house itself. “Peter wasn't a witch. Just didn't carry on through his side. His daughter has no magic, either. In fact, he wasn't very fond of witches in general. We got a pass because we lived with him, and because most of our magic covered his ass for him.” The book shakes the table when he sets it in front of her in the space she's cleared. She gently nudges her fingers beneath the back cover – it weighs a ton. Derek had carried it in hand, not even bothering to tuck it under his arm. “Either way, this is up to date until the early 2000s. We were based in New York for a while after that, no contact with other packs or covens. Nothing since I moved back, barring Alan and Marin.”

Lydia hums, tracing the leather – old, worn, and not very well taken care of, as if it had been neglected for years. There's no smoke damage, though, or anything to suggest it had been harmed by the flames or the water that must've doused them. “Did the library burn? In the fire.”

The slip of friendly demeanor Derek was finally beginning to show – slow to warm to strangers, natural for pack-based shifters – shuts off like a light. “The library burned. Most of the important books didn't. This one wasn't on the property when the fire was started.” He treks back to the head of the table and his open laptop.

When the fire was started. It's not unheard of for covens to be burned to the ground, but it seems unlikely to be useful against werewolves. Heightened senses mean no one would miss the smell of smoke or the rise in temperature, and enhanced speed, strength, and endurance would ensure everyone emerged from the flames. But Derek's language is clear – the issue here was arson, not an old aunt falling asleep with her cigarette or an electrical malfunction. Chastised, she studies the cracks in the cover of the ledger. “Storage?” she asks. “Where no one could maintain the leather?”

“Something like that,” Derek agrees, but once again his attention is miles away from her. She's sure he's looked her in the eyes once, maybe twice since they've met. It's unnerving, especially considering he's in her ideal demographic for batting her eyelashes and getting her way. Older but still young enough, single, overtly masculine. Derek sits at the very center of her official model for receiving free drinks and complimentary upgrades at hotels and on flights. And yet.

Stiles picks this moment to snore so loudly he startles himself, chair tipping back on two legs before he catches himself on the table's edge. “Fuck,” he says emphatically, and Lydia catches the barest hint of a smile on Derek's face.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

“This plan is going to get someone killed.” Cora, unlike her brother, gives off an air of indifference at the prospect of the death of a packmate. Derek had mentioned at some point that she wasn't technically pack any longer; her own chosen pack is settled in Argentina, and her presence here is more a stroke of luck than by any design. Or rather, it might be lucky, if she weren't shooting down ideas as fast as they appear without suggesting any of her own. “At the very least, someone goes out, gets zapped, and winds up in the same state as everyone else. You'd have to be crazy.”

“I'll do it.” Sounds of protest go up from almost all the members of the pack as Liam steps up. “No, okay, I'm doing this. Mason's only involved in all of this because of me.”

Allison folds her arms beside him, and Lydia can see already that she'll side with him if push comes to shove. There's a unwavering core of fairness at her center, as though she had been built around justice rather than growing it within herself. It's both admirable and foolish, and it won't make her any friends in this situation. Scott, in particular, is having none of it.

“Mason is a witch. He'd have been a witch whether he was your friend or not. If you want to go by who's responsible, I bit you. I should go.”

Lydia snorts. Nine pairs of eyes turn on her in unison, pinning her to the spot. She straightens her spine, chin up. “Sending an alpha after an unknown threat is like marching one general right into enemy territory. He gets taken out, and then where does that leave you? Scott can't go.”

It's a credit to their collective intelligence that they accept that quickly and without further discussion. They are running out of options, though. Allison's place in the sheriff's department is too valuable to forfeit, and she and Kira both were ruled out from moment one by Scott, on the grounds that one leaving the other behind just a few months before their wedding would be unthinkable. Jordan is law enforcement as well, and apparently far less stable power-wise than the other members of the pack. Scott can't go himself, and whatever is out there has had more than enough chance to notice or be noticed by Derek with no results. Lydia wouldn't go back into those woods if her life depended on it, even if it were only as far in as she'd been that first day. The inhabitants of the forest – natural and spiritual alike – are bound to the pack, but Lydia is sure that whatever is lying in wait out there isn't the only enemy she might encounter if she were to travel alone.

“I think two of us should go,” Malia proposes after a meeting composed entirely of her blank silence. “If it comes after us, one person takes the fall and the other comes back here to let us know what it is. We can leave something on the path and someone here at the edge just in case.”

“The path isn't safe anymore,” Allison points out. “The Sheriff's thinking of declaring the preserve off-limits entirely, but you know how much good that would do in Beacon Hills. Especially when something dangerous is going on.” She shoots a knowing look at Stiles across the room and he shrugs, unapologetic for whatever mess he might've gotten them into. “Two people could be a good plan, though. For combat purposes, at the least.”

The fussing and bickering is a lot for Lydia. She's not entirely sure why she was expected to be here tonight in the first place. It's clearly some sort of pack emergency summit, and she certainly doesn't belong in the middle of that. Stiles had driven his filthy Jeep (“You should've seen the old one,” he'd joked) right up into her front drive at six, banging around at the side door until she answered. It had taken a solid ten minutes to convince her to get into the thing, especially with someone like Stiles driving, but they'd gotten here safely – if a little quicker than she'd have liked. She's offered little to no valuable input and the decision, ultimately, isn't hers to make. She'd much rather be at home redoing her manicure with a more secure anti-chipping charm this time around. This is like watching her parents' divorce happen all over again.

A silence falls, one which Lydia has no context for since she's been in her own head, but she half-raises her hand anyway, spotting Stiles's smirk as she does. Teacher or no, she's not looking to be addressed by him. Scott nods at her, though, and she glances around the room at their options once more before she gathers her thoughts. “I think Liam and Malia should go. They're not human, so they might have more a resistance to whatever is happening. Liam feels obligated, but it sounded like little more than a death wish to me.” He cuts his eyes at her and she waves him off. “No offense. And Malia practically volunteered. You can swap her out for Cora if you want, but-”

“No,” Derek says, the first time he's opened his mouth all night. “Not Cora.”

“Holy shit, Derek. Way to play the dad card.” If it had been Lydia, she'd have been more offended, but Cora clearly doesn't want to go and isn't looking a gift horse in the mouth. “If Liam and Malia want to go and get themselves whammied, have at it. I'm flying home in a week, unless Derek gets his ass kicked before then and the house needs another Hale to look after it.”

Scott looks like he ate about four carnival corn dogs and rode the Tilt-a-Whirl after, but he sighs and looks to Stiles first, then Derek, and nods. “During the day, and you're both bringing your phones. There's not much service out there, but you can take pictures or video if you find anything weird. And don't-”

“Be a hero,” the rest of the pack chimes in, one unanimous decree against rash behavior. It must be how they've gone on surviving all this time, being a patchwork quilt of mostly untaught supernaturals in what many other packs would consider prime territory. Derek's land may be protected, but the rest of Beacon Hills would be fair game for any challengers. The only thing that could possibly keep them out of trouble is not sticking their nose where it doesn't belong.

The group starts to disperse, a few at a time as they mill around saying goodbyes or working out who's staying where. Lydia's pretty sure a few of the pack members just rotate houses instead of having their own place, by the looks of things. Derek is the one who takes her home now, every evening that she leaves her work here to start her own private work at home. She's the last person standing in the living room when Allison gingerly hugs her goodbye, beginning to become aware that Lydia is skittish of the affection.

She glances around, realizing even Derek has disappeared, and sees the light on in the kitchen. There's a door where the house should end, there, open for the first time that she's noticed. “Derek?” she calls, quiet, always trying to match herself to his own near-silence and failing. “Is that you?” She creeps past the kitchen table and realizes there's another door beyond the one that's swung wide. It's nothing but mesh and metal frame to hold it to the hinges. A screen door. The tiny latch that holds it closed from inside the house is hanging free, and one push takes her into the greenhouse.

Derek's never offered to show her his plants, and she's never once been interested. There's nothing that's intriguing about life to her, except as part of a duality – things live before they're dead, things thrive on what died before them. Clearly, though, Derek has something of a green thumb. The whole room is full of growth, some so far out of season that he must be tending them with magic. She spots lavender, baby's breath, and other soft, small blooms nearest the house, where it's easiest to pluck them. Part of her expects St. John's wort, as well, but she doesn't see it at first glance and would be hard-pressed to pick it from a lineup in the first place. She's always been of the mind that the clinically depressed should see their doctor rather than a witch. 

Lydia only spots Derek after a few full minutes running her fingers along the once-white higher tables, the paint chipping away and smeared over with soil. This is where Derek gets so filthy during the day, earth staining his hands and clothes, the occasional smudge on his forehead where he's wiped away the sweat. This is where he's most himself, she imagines, being what and who he is. He's not tending the plants now, only staring out through the glass at the sky, where the moon is thinning to a sliver. “Waning crescent,” she comments to announce her presence. He spares her a glance over his shoulder for a moment and nothing more, gazing out this time at eye level – toward and into the forest where her own eyes can't reach. “Cora said something earlier.”

“I'm sorry,” Derek says. She can tell it's a reflex, something he'd done maybe even before Cora left. “She says a lot of things. She grew up fast; it isn't her fault.”

“That's probably true,” she agrees. “I meant about the house – and the land, I'm guessing – needing a Hale to look after it. Is it really just you? Someone in your pack can't take over for you when you die?” It's clear as the nose on his face that it's the only situation that would tear Derek from the land again. He rarely talks about his time in New York, and she can tell that only part of it is his avoidance of the sister he lost forever. “Mason, maybe? Considering he's the only one with magic besides you and Cora.”

“And Stiles,” Derek adds. “There's magic in Stiles, it just can't get out. Doesn't matter, though. This land is tied to my family, not my pack, or else Cora and I wouldn't belong here anymore. There is no Hale pack. Hasn't been for a long time. It's about blood and magic.”

“Sounds dark,” Lydia teases, but the mood is all wrong for it to be taken well, and she bites hard at the inside of her lip, embarrassed. “So it's you and Cora, and Malia if her kids have magic?”

Derek laughs, dry and nearly soundless, shaking his head. “Malia with kids? It'd have to be with a witch, for it to work out that way, and I doubt she has any on purpose. She's like her dad that way. It's me and my sister, and neither of us are great candidates for future offspring.”

Lydia quirks an eyebrow, but the effect is lost to Derek's turned back. “There's plenty of time. You're, what, thirty? Most people don't even start thinking about these things until thirty these days, and Cora's even younger.”

“Cora,” Derek says, finally turning away from the window, leaning back against the table strewn with gardening tools, “is a lesbian. And it's...complicated, for me. Especially with all of this happening.” He gestures broadly, something she thinks he might've picked up from Stiles. It looks strange coming from his compact, controlled body, his consciousness of motion. “Can't trust anything anymore.”

“Because this thing's making people not act like themselves?”

“Because this thing is in my home. I sleep here, I eat here, but that out there?” He points into the distance, and she knows he doesn't mean the treeline but deep, further into the tangle of the forest. “That's where we came from; that's where we belong. Why do you think I go out there every day? Whatever's going on in there is my responsibility and my problem. Scott, he thinks he gets it because he's an alpha. It isn't the same thing it all. It's not just that the dryads leave me alone or that I always seem to find the easiest path home. I've never tripped over a root in those woods. I never stumbled into poison ivy or thorns. The one thing that's never hurt me now might as well be killing everyone else.”

Lydia feels her eyes go round as saucers. “Derek. Say that again. Exactly as you said it before.”

“The whole thing? I-”

“The last bit. The one thing....”

He sighs. “That's never hurt me. I know, I know what it sounds like, but I wouldn't say it if it weren't true.”

“I know,” she agrees, and she watches Derek's face turn from exhausted to concerned by increments. “Come with me to kitchen table,” she demands, winding her way through the leaves and branches and swinging the screen door so wide it crashes like lightning on its return. Her bag is here, like it always is when she visits the house, just in case someone happens on them from the woods in need of help. “Sit!” she yells, knowing Derek is probably hovering in the doorway, skeptical of her sudden revelation.

He gets even more confused and indignant when she wraps the blood pressure cuff around his arm and starts to inflate it. “You're not a doctor.”

“I just play one on TV.” There's no stethoscope, only a bottle of oil she uses to mark beneath her ear and at the crook of Derek's elbow until she can hear the thrum of his pulse loud and clear. “Now sit still and be quiet.” She listens carefully as the cuff deflates, squints, and begins to pump again for a second check. “Great gods alive, Derek, is it normal for werewolves your age to have hypertension so severe a normal person would stroke?”

“What?” He doesn't even try to move when she rips the cuff off, throwing it back in the bag in favor of her pen light, and kneels up on the chairs next to him, holding her hands near his face until he nods. She thumbs down below his right eye and clicks on the light, startled by first the flash of electric blue and then his head being jarred loose from her hands. “What the hell, Lydia?”

“Photophobia,” she tells him, tossing the light back into her bag and hearing it clack all the way to the bottom. Hopefully she hasn't broken it. “Did you go into the preserve today? All the way in, out toward the path?”

Derek's still jamming the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, doubled over, but he nods. “Of course I did. I go every day. It's my responsibility.”

Lydia throws her hands in the air, eyes cast toward the ceiling in the hopes that there's some deity out there witnessing her genius and appreciating it. She climbs down from the chair and kneels beside her bag, spreading it as wide as the mouth will go and reaching in elbows deep with both arms as she searches for the herb sachet she knows must be hiding someplace inside. Cat's claw, hawthorn, cinnamon, basil – it's not going to make a very nice-tasting tea. “Can I harvest some of your lavender and hibiscus?”

He stiffens, and she can tell he's about to refuse when he suddenly moves his hands, blinking the spots in his vision away. “I already have some hibiscus I was planning to ship out tomorrow. It's labeled over there on the counter.” She can feel him watching her as she finally pulls up the sachet, triumphant. “You have a Mary Poppins bag,” he says, stunned.

“And you have a migraine.” The hibiscus petals are bright, easily spotted, and she portions some out into the mixture, grabbing a tall mug hanging on a hook next to the coffee pot. She turns the tap's hot knob on full blast and grabs the tap itself, channeling energy she likely could've used later tonight for her own devices to hyperheat the water. Her skin is pink and stinging when she pulls it away, but the water that flows over the herbs is boiling. “We're going to steep this for a few minutes and I'll cool it for you.”

Derek is still watching in disbelief. “I don't have a migraine. I actually can't have a migraine. I feel fine, Lydia. The headache is just stress, my body doesn't-”

“You aren't feeling the pain, but your body is reacting to it. You've been going out there every day, letting whatever's out there attack you, and your blood pressure is through the roof. The regular light is aggravating it, but it took the direct, bright beam to actually hurt you. All this time we thought it wasn't doing anything to you.”

“No,” Derek says, shaking his head, watching Lydia spoon sugar into the tea to make it somewhat palatable. “I would remember. I would know that the headache started in the same place every time, it would be obvious. I don't take the same path every time. I would remember someone inflicting migraines on me.”

Lydia shoves the cup into his hands, still steaming hot, and he passes it hand to hand for a moment before he pulls a gardening glove from his pocket and uses it to grip the handle. “What are the effects of the magic?”

His expression is flat, but he humors her. “Fever, migraine, hallucinations, disorientation....”

“And amnesia,” she finishes, watching as it dawns on him. “Whoever this is, they're getting people lost and making them forget what they saw. That's why not everyone is getting the worst of it. Everyone else is just an innocent person who ran into this asshole. You've had part of your memories wiped every day for weeks.” She nudges his cup. “Drink. We need to get your blood pressure down before we start testing whether a werewolf can heal from a TIA.”

Derek takes a long pull from the cup, wincing but swallowing it down. “This tastes like hot garbage. I hope all your teas don't turn out like this.”

“I'm going to pretend that's the migraine talking.” Lydia sits, pulling her bag up into her lap and rifling through the top layer of contents. A tiny skull has come loose from something further inside, and she pulls it out to check species before she replaces it in its proper container, aware of Derek watching her. “I wouldn't say it's a Mary Poppins bag, by the way. More like Moody's chest.”

He doesn't ask questions about the mouse skull, so she considers the redirection a success. They argue for a while about humans without magic writing fiction including it. Derek thinks it's harmful, creating stereotypes and skewing expectations of young people just discovering their craft. It's a load of crock, obviously, but it's interesting to watch him talk about something new and not so close and pressing as what's happening around them. He really gives a shit about how people see witches, even beyond the extremists looking to slander and, quite possibly, behead them. It's sort of cute.

“No one ever died because they thought witches go to Hogwarts,” she counters. “Though that's partly because I showed remarkable restraint with the little girl who thought I was Ginny Weasley.” The tension in his forehead is starting to ease, his pulse in her ear still present, thrumming slower. He laughs when she tells the long version of the story, even harder when she pulls the high-powered magical sunblock she'd put together the same day, knowing freckles would be the nail in the coffin.

In the back of her mind, though, she worries about what they've stumbled on tonight. If amnesia is affecting everyone, then no one knows who or what is causing all of this. Mason, a witch who should've been able to fight most of the effects, could only remember so much as the preserve, even with her help. She's dosed a few of the people released from the hospital after their headaches subsided and found nothing. Now she's not sure whether the draught is having no effect or if there's nothing to remember at all. Why would something need to be invisible if it causes amnesia? Redundancy is a waste of time and energy in most magic, only useful in cases like the magic cloaking the preserve itself, strongly woven protection spells that only weave themselves thicker under any sign of a threat. Natural redundancy is common that way, but they've ruled out the nature spirits of the forest and any of the magical endowed animals and plants living side by side with them. She's stumped.

When she finally gets home – two hours and another cup and a half of tea later, this time just the hibiscus and cat's claw – there's still so much to be done before she sleeps. Her entire bag has to be taken down to the basement, the more suspicious odds and ends arranged there so she's not caught out with them again. Derek is exactly the type to turn his nose up at death magic. His craft celebrates and encourages life, honoring the dead. Her own dabbling in other uses for the particular type of energy death can generate would be practically sacrilege for him and all of his kind. The last thing she needs is to be run out of town with pitchforks. She isn't Dr. Frankenstein. Even necromancy doesn't reach that far into the depths of magic. She just wants to be among the first in the open generation to tap this power safely. Lydia will be a wise wielder.

She finds she can't sleep even after the oil burns out in her lamp, signaling time to return to the ground floor. Her three hour rule is more ritual than a reminder to get enough sleep, anyway, and her laptop is waiting on her bed where she'd left it this morning. Six emails have come in through her site in the last week that she hasn't had the patience to deal with. Rent is due soon, though, and the money is as much a necessity as anything else. It's all work, she reminds herself. Finish the job, get paid, move on.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

The people of Beacon Hills, the ones who aren't staggering amnesiac zombies, that is, are getting increasingly concerned. Her doorbell rings twice as often in the daytime for fortune reading, though she can't complain about the money or the ease of the readings. They come with specific questions – whether they should leave town on business for a while to avoid the threat, how the spreading problem will affect their hours at the hospital or their relationship with a devoted runner who insists on running near, if not through, the woods. Her spreads for them shrink until she can read yes or no in one card easily, and she almost feels bad for charging them the standard price. Almost.

On Saturday afternoon, she gets a call from Scott, an update on the plan they'd carried out early that morning. Malia is a bit dizzy, head aching, but otherwise fine; she'd managed to carry Liam back and hand the phones over to Danny waiting at the Hale house.

“She said he just fainted,” Scott says, sounding unconvinced. “He woke up about an hour ago.”

“And he remembers nothing?”

“Not even going into the woods in the first place,” he confirms. “The last thing he could be sure he remembered was talking to Danny yesterday about going over the footage with Derek and Stiles today. Which is useless too, of course.”

Lydia frowns. “The memory is useless?”

“The video they shot with their phones. It's nothing but static. Danny's trying to clear some of the audio interference now, see if one of us can at least hear what happened. No promises, but we'll call you if we find anything.”

“Stay safe,” Lydia finds herself saying when she hangs up, still staring at the list of her recent calls after she puts the phone down. The entire first page is littered with Beacon Hills numbers that she's refused to save to her contacts. Three missed calls from Stiles, two outgoing to Melissa McCall to check on Mason, and three separate accepted calls from Allison over the past few days. She hadn't realized they talked so much.

There's an outgoing call to Derek if she scrolls just a bit further down. She remembers that call, checking up on him, because he refuses to stop going into the woods. Manufactured medicine has little to no effect on shifters with healing powers, but he won't even let her brew something to relieve his symptoms after the mishap with the first tea. She'd had to make sure that he was at least making his own, and that he was drinking it three times a day like he was supposed to. They'd talked for half an hour or more, going over not only the tea but the upcoming plans and all they entailed. He's the reason Lydia didn't have to take off work for the day, leaving a little more money in her pocket than she'd have had otherwise. She smiles as she closes the page, but there's something unsettling in the memory.

 

The doorbell rings at five minutes to four. She's practicing her 'sorry, come again' speech under her breath when she peeks through the Invisiblinds and sees Derek standing on the other side of her business door.

“Is something wrong?” she asks as soon as she can get the door flung open. “Is it Liam?”

“Liam's fine,” Derek assures her quickly. “As fine as he's going to get right now. He's with Melissa and Mason, I dropped them off on my way here. Malia's back at the house with Danny and Scott, listening through the videos. Everyone's okay.” He follows her in when she relaxes, leaving the door open and trekking back to the front room's table, starting to gather up her cards so she can cleanse them and put them away. “Wait,” he says, holding his hand above hers rather than touching the cards themselves. He goes into his pocket for his wallet, plucking out bills until he has the price of a reading in his hand. “I'm here for a reading.”

It's another of those moments where his face gives away nothing as to whether he's kidding, but as he drops the money onto the table, she knows he has to be serious. No one forks over that kind of money for nothing. “Why? You can do this yourself, I'm sure.”

“I can't, actually. My parents didn't put any stock in this, and neither did Laura. I never bothered to learn. And...” He points at the deck in her hands, the ornate death's head repeated on every back. “I've heard some things about these cards.”

Lydia spreads the cards face up for him, showing off the designs she'd described herself to the artist she'd studied with during her college years. “I have actual tarot cards. I just can't get connected to them. Knowing what someone else meant when they put a bunch of cryptic symbols together isn't the easiest in the world. I always know what I mean when I'm working with my own cards.”

“Can I....”

She nods, handing them over. “If you're here for a reading, it's good for you to handle them, actually. Look all you want. Let me know if you feel drawn to any of them, that's usually a sign.” She watches him sit, already carefully studying her first card, the calipers, before she goes to flip the doorbell housing shut and lock it and flip her sign around. 'For emergencies, contact Marin Morrell' it says – Lydia's final condition for moving here. She'd had no interest in being woken by the vigorous knocking of the haunted, cursed, or possessed. A lot of good it did for her beauty sleep, in the end.

The crystal ball she moves away from her line of sight in its setting, clearing the space between herself and Derek on the tabletop. He's about halfway through the deck, alternately squinting and smiling as he recognizes the eclectic mix of scientific instruments, supernatural creatures, and spell ingredients. “People get results with these?”

“People would get results from a reading if I bullshitted my way through every second of it. It's all about what they came to here and what they're willing to consider. But yes. It works much better when I use my own cards. There's nothing magical about the Ryder-Waite deck. It's symbology. Mysticism. And honestly, a mnemonic to help you remember what the cards mean. I can do that better with the cards I invented myself.”

He nods his understanding, beginning to flick through the cards more quickly. Lydia doesn't blame him for wanting to get down to the business of the reading; she feels the same way. This was one afternoon she had counted on being free to catch a nap and handle some online consulting. She's clearing her mind in preparation when Derek lets out a soft breath and slides a card across the table to her. “This one,” he says, tapping against the glossy surface. “This is the one.”

He's chosen the Banshee, ghostly pale and dressed, not in white like the traditional drawings, but in jet black. Her artist had taken a good bit of liberty in drawing her, as she'd only indicated a young woman in black whose feet didn't touch the ground, with much more detail given for the surrounding scenery. In return, he'd drawn the figure green-eyed with bright red hair, obviously pulling from the Irish roots of the legend. It's honestly not meant to look like her. It wouldn't be the first time someone accused her of it if Derek were to point out the resemblance, though.

“That's the Banshee,” she says, though the card's title and number are clearly printed across the bottom. “It makes sense that she'd be your first instinct.”

“An omen of death?”

“Not in my deck. Not necessarily. More like a past death affecting you now. Usually a woman.” She looks down at the card, giving him a private moment with whatever his reaction to that may be. “The cards never mean something as concrete as 'someone's going to die'. That's inflexible. They're meant to be interpreted. The Banshee is death, women, a cry for help, a sense of longing. Any of half a dozen things, usually more than one. But considering....I'd say that death and women are the most relevant points, here.”

She glances back and finds him nodding, turning the deck over without studying the remaining cards. “Right. So, how does this work? I'm supposed to have a question to ask you?”

“Or a topic to explore. Either works just fine, but it depends on how much you want to hear. If you have one question that needs a yes or no answer, I can have you flip one card and read that for you. But if you're looking to have a conversation, a topic is better. So if you're here to find out what else you can do about this problem in the forest, something that doesn't involve daily assault by someone or something that hates us...”

“I'm not here about the preserve,” Derek says, blocking out space for himself with thick forearms, visibly preparing for what's to come. She can't imagine what could be so intimidating for him that doesn't involve the repeated harm to his pack. “I want a reading about love.”

Lydia blinks at him. “A reading about love.”

“Do you do that? Or is that beneath a witch like you who totes skulls around?” For once she can see the mischief in his eyes, the quirk in his lip that isn't quite a smile. Teasing her.

“Of course I do that. I wouldn't make any money if I didn't. Ask any witch who runs a general practice what the majority of their calls are about. It's either a reading, a spell to draw love, or someone who thinks we'll actually brew them an honest to god love potion as if there were no such thing as consent. I can give you a reading about love, absolutely.”

What she doesn't say is how odd it is to do this sort of reading for someone she's acquainted with. Her closest friends at college, before and after the coven, loved to take love readings from her, and that had been all fine and good. They could laugh about it together, making fun of exes and giggling over cliché 'tall, dark strangers' in their future. Come to think of it, Lydia has nearly always drawn the Stranger for herself after she'd created her deck. She'd come to be settled with the idea that her future in love was, for better or worse, unknown to her. Looking at the card now, she studies the tall man with dark hair, face obscured in shadow, his curled hand yanking the collar of the dog sitting at his feet. The distant background shows a lush treeline and a small graveyard – something she'd asked for specifically, feeling the need to remind herself of the inherent danger in those things which she didn't or couldn't yet understand. She hasn't drawn a love spread for herself in a very long time.

For Derek, she uses her usual form for clients, letting him cut the deck before she arranges thirteen cards in an intricate pattern. She prefers her own spreads to the ones she'd been forced to practice on in the beginning, needing to further her own symbolism to help her organize the train of thought the cards try to convey. Her love spread looks almost like a family tree, branching down from a single card. They aren't linear as far as time, more like different branches for the past, present, and future, but she can usually find the sequence of events the client is looking for. She lays the root card last, the heart of both question and answer.

It's the Banshee.

“Sorry,” Derek says, and he might be blushing beneath that beard. “It's my fault, I've been thinking about...don't worry about it. Just read the rest, if you can.”

Lydia nods, turns the card face down, leaving the ornamental skull face up at the head. “You have a rocky past,” she says, struggling to keep her voice calm and level. She's supposed to be neutral in readings. It's official rule number two, right after never giving advice. “Love-wise. A lot of dissatisfied partners,” she adds, her fingertips carefully tracing Greed, the blond man stripped to his waist in a rosy halo of light. Beneath him, his pile of gold, and before him, his outstretched hand as he reaches for yet more. “But not by any fault of your own.” She smiles up at him. “That's good news at least? Maybe not for your taste in dates.” He doesn't smile, inclining his head to the cards, ushering her on.

His past is a mess, speaking kindly. Greed, Denial and the closed gate that symbolizes it, and even her least favorite card in the deck, The Mask. Derek looks mortified as she describes the betrayal and deception inherent in the image, the serpent's head revealed behind the false front of a young girl. She feels less comfortable with her attempt at a joke the more she digs, discovering the depth of Derek's relationship trouble. Even in the abstract, she can tell there's nothing to joke about here.

His present is better, but not exceptionally. She picks apart the four cards for him, reading his preoccupation (The Student), his frustration (The Virgin, which makes him laugh and shake his head), and the other struggles happening now that are affecting his ability to find or enjoy a relationship. The only thing she finds that surprises her is his deep concern for the people around them and how his desire might affect them.

“You're awfully worried about what the pack will think of you,” she comments lightly.

“I have to think of them first. You saw my past. I learned from it.”

She accepts it for what it is, because she has no right to do anything else. Doesn't mean she isn't curious. She's half-tempted to ask Allison what's been happening in Beacon Hills in the decade she's been around. Derek asks more about a few of the cards, getting her to explain all of the details in the images to him, brows furrowed as he pretends to study them carefully. He's stalling artfully, but she is not easily fooled.

“The future,” she announces, moving onto the last branch of the tree when he hesitates, running out of questions. “I have some good news and some bad news. You are one hundred percent ready to fall in love, according to these.” She indicates the top two cards and the wide open space in the art of both, the actual anatomical heart illustrated in vivid reds and blues as the symbol of The Lover. “You're interested, have your eye on someone, and feel hopeful about it.”

Derek hums, which she'll take as an agreement. “And the bad news?”

 

Lydia taps the Death card, one of the few card ideas she'd carried over from the traditional decks she played with early in her studies. “This.”

“Someone's going to die? No, that's too obvious, you said these things weren't obvious. It's going to happen but then end.” That answer he seems to resign himself to before she's even opened her mouth, like it makes the most sense after good news.

“You might be right, if this card were last. It isn't.” The final card of the spread is the Garden, a happy card if she ever saw one. Most of her cards have a negative meaning somewhere to balance them, or at least a grotesque turn to the imagery, like the visceral realistic detail of the heart so close to these other cards. The Garden is in full bloom with pastel colors, a healthy amount of weeds merely waiting to be pulled, the sunshine gentle but bathing everything in golden light. “From what I can see, you'll have a good outcome in this relationship. Death is the obstacle in your way. Something monumental holding back progress – a hurdle you have to leap, or an attitude you have to give up.”

She can follow the subtle, muted emotions that Derek wanders through as he considers the cards, lingering on the simple illustration she chose for Death – utter blackness fading toward the center into a pinpoint of brilliant light. “You're very good at this,” he says quietly, without looking to her face. “Thank you.”

“Should we talk about....” She gestures at the overturned Banshee, at the true essence of everything she's read. “There are a lot of meanings here. It could help you make any decisions-”

“No, I know what it means. I know what to do. Thank you, Lydia.” He stands, plucking another twenty from his wallet and tossing it atop the cards. “I need to check on those recordings. I'll see you tomorrow night.”

He lets himself out, the lock clicking shut behind him just as she's about to go and turn it herself. Lydia peeks through her blinds to watch him climb into his car – the SUV, plenty of soft space for Liam to lie down in between the Hale house and Melissa's. She can picture it now, Derek's music turned down until it's inaudible to human ears and a lullaby to the hyperactive senses of an overstimulated shifter. Driver glancing back over his shoulder to check on the poor kid. Liam's barely younger than most of the members of the pack, though that makes him about a decade younger than Derek, who treats him like a son more often than not. It's a common enough attitude in the pack, strongest in Scott but most noticeable in Derek because of his age.

Her mind wanders over the other members of the pack carefully, picking through everyone present in Derek's inner circle. There's Allison, gorgeous and remarkably put together compared to other people their age, giving off the air of being a real adult rather than a teenager learning to pretend. Engaged to Kira, who is laughing at something Derek's said nearly every time Lydia sees her, tugging on her fiance's arm to bring her into the conversation. There's a warmth there, stronger with Kira than with Allison, something Lydia can chalk up to the serious history Derek seems to have with the more long-standing members of the pack. The water is, if not entirely under the bridge, at least not so troubled anymore. He likes Allison, maybe even loves her, and certainly loves Kira, but they aren't who she's looking for.

She briefly considers Malia, because there are a lot of rumors about born shifters and their traditions, but the cousins seem to be even less close than most of the other pack members, regardless of blood. Liam and Mason are right out, based on attitude alone. There's Jordan, who seems to be a fairly ideal candidate – Derek's age, a pretty face and a good body, definitely goodhearted if a little torn between his responsibilities to the law and to the pack. The handful of times she's heard him speak, Derek's been respectful or even agreeable to what he has to say. But after long hours with Derek and Stiles in the library, she knows that smiling and nodding is Derek's sign of neutrality and nothing more.

Stiles. There's an option. Young, but not quite so young as the youngest members of the pack, and intricately woven into the workings of the town and their small subset. He hangs around the Hales an astonishing amount of time, considering – and this she's only learned very recently – that he lives with Scott. As a couple. The first time she'd seen them kiss goodbye, Lydia had lost her professional composure entirely, bowled over by this sudden knowledge. The pair of them are close as brothers, and she'd assumed they were long-time friends, maybe college roommates, familiarity gained through years and shared spaces. Kira teased her for ogling, and she'd gone red, but she'd honestly had no idea.

The time that Lydia has spent with Stiles and Derek is the type of thing she'd see in a romantic comedy trying hard at being quirky. Stiles is almost a caricature of the already cartoonish sidekick role, from the dirty jokes to his loyalty to Scott, and even his frequent (but not always correct) 'aha!' moments. Derek is quieter, quicker to doubt himself, and usually absorbed in one thing for long periods of time as Stiles flits between topics and activities. They make decent foils, she guesses, and she's seen the way they interact at times – fond exasperation, genuine reactions to each other that aren't dialed back for politeness and propriety. Stiles is a solid option. He even comes complete with a huge, nearly insurmountable obstacle.

That obstacle, though, is an equally strong candidate. Scott's handsome, kind, and a natural leader. She'd been far more surprised by seeing him kiss Stiles than she was when she'd found out he was not only an alpha but a true alpha, having risen from a beta without inheriting or stealing the power and title. She can remember thinking he was a little useless on first meeting him, soft. But that softness is his strength with his pack. Derek looks at him with the sort of admiration she's never had for anyone she knows personally; even Marin, on their first meeting, had been just a witch with more practice than her. It's a strange dynamic, with Scott looking to Derek on so many things he has no experience with and could only learn from a born wolf, and Derek looking always to Scott for guidance on decisions, or even just to mirror his reaction to whatever topic is on the floor.

Scott or Stiles. In the end it doesn't matter, two halves of the same whole, and equally removed from Derek's options by their devotion to each other. She picks up the final card in the spread, holding it close to notice every detail of the blooming flowers, scrawny weeds, the product of fertile soil. It speaks to a good foundation, healthy and nourishing, and continued growth. It could, at a stretch, be nothing more than the deepening of friendship after Derek leaps the hurdle of his romantic feelings. That interpretation feels wrong in her core, more so than contemplating Derek being the ultimate cause of a split between the heart of group – the two people without whom this pack would be nothing but disparate parts scattered to the wind.

She hesitates to cleanse the cards, Derek's energy still lingering, and makes her decision as she places them into her bag and then into the wooden box where her decks rest. Now she has the option to play with them tomorrow, ask her own questions about the situation. Meddle a little. She knows better, and she likely won't, but her opportunity is there. It stays on her mind as she cooks herself dinner and eats alone at her coffee table, wishing she'd asked her roommate if she could keep the television they'd shared. The house is quiet, the one thing about nighttime in Beacon Hills that she's so far savored, but it doesn't sit right.

The basement door stays locked tonight as she passes it on the way to her bed, craving rest from these thoughts and her conflicted feelings. Part of her wants Derek to be happy after so many failed attempts; another says that this isn't right for him, can't be good for the pack, no matter what her cards have to say. She's troubled even safely tucked beneath her exquisitely soft sheets, her one true splurge during this move. This is what she gets for being too deeply involved in the workings of this tiny, isolated part of her temporary home. They must be close to a breakthrough. It's coming.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Lydia sticks close to Allison's side the next time all of them are together, this time at Melissa McCall's house. Melissa herself is busy pulling a double shift at the hospital, but Stiles turns up waving a keychain to let in everyone loitering at the door. They check up on Mason and Liam while the shifters listen over the audio that could be salvaged. Scott's ears are the most powerful, but Malia's eyes are shut tight in concentration, head tilted to the speakers hooked to Stiles's laptop. Lydia spares a moment to regret magic not carrying down through Malia's line; the power of concentration is already palpable as she tries to jog her own memory, listening to forgotten words in her own familiar voice.

Liam is recovering rapidly, more concerned about Mason's health than his own, and Lydia tries to explain to him that Mason is perfectly stable. Melissa and Scott wake him up briefly every few days to check his progress, but the delirium is unrelenting. A spell only able to be removed by the witch who cast it, perhaps, or otherwise tied to the root cause. As long as Melissa is able to feed him with a tube rather than intravenously, he's perfectly safe where he is. Liam doesn't seem comforted, but his questions relent, and he lies back down beside his friend to rest. He's distracted enough that he doesn't catch Lydia glancing across the room.

 

Derek doesn't behave any differently toward anyone today than he did before the reading, unless she's missing something subtle. He's looking on as Stiles types up the bits and pieces Scott dictates to him, nodding along in agreement and checking Malia's reaction to whatever she's saying in the recording. Nothing out of the ordinary. She zeroes in on Derek's hand, balanced on the back of the borrowed kitchen chair, fingertips brushing Scott's bare inches from Stiles's back. Everything is normal, but with Derek's watered down reactions to most things, it doesn't tell her anything about what he's decided since having his fortune read.

“I wish Kira were here,” Allison says, her phone cradled in her palm as she googles. “It might be easier to get an idea of what they're talking about if she could draw it. Can you? Draw.”

Lydia flushes, shaking her head. “I tried in college. Art is a great medium for magic. I thought I was going to be really good, but it turns out I started on trees, which are...the only thing I can draw half-decently.” She peeks at Allison's screen, 'white and purple flowers' entered in her search bar. “You can hear what they're talking about?”

“They're not the only ones with good hearing.” She clicks into the images, a wildly varying range of plants showing up as she turns the phone to Lydia. “Do you recognize any of this?”

It's mostly nonsense to Lydia, who's used to dealing with all but the most recognizable and easily available plants after harvesting and, occasionally, drying or powdering. It's worth a pass, though, and Allison adds dark green leaves and a 'weird' smell to the criteria for the plant that neither shifter had recognized. Weird isn't the most descriptive or scientific term, but it sounds negative, and she desperately wishes she'd paid any attention to this side of the craft. Flowers fall into two categories for her: things she'd like to receive before a date and things she can use in her work. Anything that doesn't fall obviously into one or both has been swept into the cobwebby corners of her mind where she forces the names and faces of elementary school friends and the lyrics to radio songs no one plays anymore.

They're still searching when Scott's phone rings with a call from his mother on her brief break for food and coffee. He answers haltingly in Spanish twice, leaving Lydia confused until he hangs up. “Mom says two girls came in today, high out of their minds. A bunch of the other symptoms, and they don't remember taking anything, but...”

“They're tripping balls,” Stiles finishes for him. “That's probably nothing to do with our stuff, right? They just got high and don't want to tell the doctors what they took because they're scared they'll get in trouble.”

“I don't think so, dude. They didn't come in together. What are the chances?”

“Hell's bells,” Derek says conversationally, looking across the room to Lydia for the first time today. If he's looking for someone else to curse with him, he'd have been better served with literally anyone else in the room. She nods awkwardly.

Cora, beside him, rolls her eyes. “You can say that again.”

“No,” Derek insists, shoving Stiles's entire chair half a foot the left and crouching to go over what they have on the screen. “Closed, white flowers with a little purple. The delirium, the enlarged pupils. Hell's bells.”

Lydia's fingers fly over the keys of the phone in her hands, the distinctive flowers loading in place of the mostly-purple blooms they'd been scrolling through. “Devil's snare. You think it's datura?”

“It fits, doesn't it?”

“Um, no. The last time I checked, datura wears off after a day or two. Mason's been down for weeks. Some of the symptoms match, and maybe whoever's doing this used it as the basis for the spell, but there's no way that every person who's come in is high on jimsonweed. This is magical.”

Derek shakes his head, standing and crossing the room with his hands on top of his head. Stiles, still offended, shuffles back in front of their information, pulling up a search of his own to look at the plant. “Does this look familiar?” he asks Malia uselessly, though she can't blame him for trying. Anything that could possibly help is a good idea, but her face is blank as he scrolls through snapshots of the flowers open or closed, close-ups of the different parts and the many variations. The memory is gone and isn't coming back, a permanent effect of the magic. There's no way this is nothing but a plant.

“Is datura even supposed to grow in California? Does it grow in the preserve at all? You never mentioned it when we spent hours going over everything that could be considered living out there, down to slugs and snails.” Lydia feels a twinge of shame for calling him out so hard, but she doesn't want everyone getting their hopes up for a simple solution of pulling a plant up the roots if there's a legitimate threat lurking somewhere in those woods. “You know more than me, but I don't remember you ever bringing it up as an option. The symptoms are close enough that you'd have realized before now.”

“I know! I know, okay, I've never seen any out there in thirty years, but it makes sense. Even if there's a witch doing this, if the spell is based from the plant, we might have a shot at working out an antidote. We might not even have to make anything. There's a medical cure for datura poisoning and Melissa probably has it on hand somewhere in that hospital. They use it for a dozen other more common things.” He looks miffed when Lydia shows her surprise, turning back to Scott. “Text her. Ask her if the tox screens look for jimsonweed; she might know it as locoweed. It can't hurt to check and make sure.”

“Are you telling me,” Stiles asks, turning around to straddle the back of the chair, “that everyone out of their minds in the hospital is high and everyone else just got the worst contact high ever?”

“We won't know until Mom gets off, she locks her phone away while she's working. Until then...” Scott looks to Derek first, Lydia notes, the unspoken words between them conveyed perfectly before he turns to her. “We try and figure out whether there's something that explains the magic and the poisoning, if they're coming from the same place. I don't know.” He doesn't look like he's happy about a breakthrough. Instead, Lydia can see for a moment how his role weighs on him. His body doesn't age with the wear, thanks to the bite, but behind his eyes he's exhausted from maintaining concern for everyone while trying to fix things. Allison wraps him up in a hug that he half-heartedly returns, eyes open over her shoulder, never resting entirely.

Lydia and Derek leave with Cora while Stiles descends into a clickhole at his laptop, trying to move past paywalls on studies done on atypical reactions to datura. It's not going to get him anything worth looking too hard at. Most atypical reactions are caused by an individual body's reaction to a substance – an allergy, a difference in tolerance, or paradoxical reactions that are more common in the very young and very old. Only a few of the victims (patients, Derek corrects her as she thinks out loud) are younger than sixteen or older than sixty, and there's no way the entire town of Beacon Hills is allergic to a plant that likely doesn't even grow here. “Are there even magical uses for this stuff? Beyond the cultural stuff, I mean mainstream magic.”

She catches his eyes in the rearview mirror, even more striking when she can't see the rest of his face. “Sure. Divination. Flying ointment.” He looks away to the road. “Necromancy. Nothing either of us is interested in. Right?”

Her blood runs ice cold and she closes the door behind her when she's dropped off at home, even though it's only to gather an overnight bag full of clothes and toiletries. There are plenty of empty bedrooms in the Hale house where she can crash for a few hours at night, and most of the pack will likely be in and out at all hours. She checks the lock on the basement every time she passes by, antsy at the prospect of leaving everything down there on hold in the dark, but it can't be helped. She grabs everything she can imagine needing for more dedicated research, including a cushion to put behind her in Derek's ridiculous high-backed chairs, and hurries back out with her official closed sign to hang on the door.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

The first thing that Lydia learns in the Hale house is that Cora and Derek spend a lot more time together than she'd ever imagined. She'd never joined them in the library, but outside of that carefully sealed wing of the second floor, she seems to be ever-present. Derek cooks for her and they eat at the dinner table, always inviting Lydia and whoever else is under the roof that moment. He seems to have no idea how to cook for less than a family with several kids, which Lydia thinks is wisest not to comment on. The food is hearty and rustic at dinnertime, quick and light at lunch, and the one time she agrees to sit for breakfast, she's stunned when Derek offers her a bruleed grapefruit. There's salt sprinkled over the caramelized sugar. She'd been vaguely aware that he must know something about food, with all the things he was growing on the property, but it seems impossible that Derek knows so much about so many things.

Cora sits at every meal and talks to Derek about things Lydia can't relate to, friends and relatives dead or at least gone, old memories. It's transparent every time her brother tries to shift the topic closer to the pack or the craft, only making it more obvious to Lydia that she sticks out like a sore thumb at the table with the Hales. They sit side by side, somehow arguing companionably, dark-haired and nearly identical when they scowl or smile in unison. It hurts a little to know that the rest of the Hales are gone. That there were a handful more just like these, variations on a theme that just works. It leaves her happy to resign herself to eating and listening, knowing that Cora and Derek are all they have left and these visits are their time to be with someone who remembers things from 'before' as Derek calls it.

The second thing that she learns in the Hale house is that Derek isn't a morning person. He's up early, sure, but she watches him carry a giant travel mug of coffee with him into the greenhouse in his bare feet and sweatpants, taking care of his responsibilities but not happy about it. She doesn't love mornings herself, but they've always been a necessity; thirteen had signaled the beginning of a life that began in the wee hours made for putting on her face like an armor. It's no different as a witch, though her makeup budget has shrunk significantly. The morning routine focuses more on her magic these days, but it's no less of a necessary defense mechanism, even here among – dare she say it – friends.

When they aren't eating, they're reading, and Lydia relents after three straight hours of fine print and rapid blinking, taking up the glasses that have sat on the table beside her since Derek first offered them. Cora brings them tea from time to time, wordlessly setting the pot and clean mugs down and booking it back out of the room as if she's being chased. “She wasn't allowed in the library, before,” Derek explains to her.

“Well, that would only make me spend more time in here,” Lydia says, but she's grateful for the tea and the limited interruptions, so she doesn't bother trying to get Cora to stick around in the library for any length of time. Whatever the brew is, it's not one of Derek's, all the notes bright and sharp rather than warm, and it eases the tension in her neck and back from bending close over the books. Derek, too, is hunched over stacks of journals, spellbooks, and botanical texts written by witches; with the likelihood of the culprit being any sort of creature so weakened, he's abandoned the bestiary's pages to read alongside her. His long arms and legs nudge into her personal space more often than not, but not in a way that feels invasive, and they work mostly in silence unless they need to consult one another.

They're ruling more things out than finding feasible options, but they're helpless to do anything else until they know something more concrete. It begins to feel uncomfortably as if they're waiting for someone else to get hurt, to show some new symptom or to die and give them a clearer picture of the problem. Scott drops by to tell them that a few of the more recent patients have tested positive for datura stramonium, but the older cases either never were affected or have excreted it by now, despite their continued symptoms. Treating with the usual drug, a cholinesterase inhibitor that Lydia had high hopes for considering its promising chemical properties, has eased a few of the symptoms, but not gotten any serious results. The amnesia seems to lift a bit briefly after administration, but always returns, leaving the doctors and nurses stumped. As much as Lydia puts stock in traditional, chemistry-based medicine, it doesn't seem to be doing their job for them this time.

She's on her fourth mug of tea for the day, still steaming thanks to a clever little warming charm on the pot, when she notices Derek is looking at her. Not staring, exactly, but too many glances to consider them each an isolated event. At first, Lydia's sure it's the glasses – they're Derek's father's, he'd said, a human witch with human pitfalls like poor eyesight. It must be strange to see them on someone else again after all these years. But when she takes them off to rest and fix herself a fifth cup of tea, checking her phone for any updates from Malia, who's sitting with Mason today, he doesn't stop.

“Is there something on my face?” she asks, frowning when she realizes her compact is downstairs in the room she's been sleeping in. “If so, I'd hope you would've told me before now, since I haven't eaten since breakfast.”

Derek looks startled by the fact that she's noticed him at all, quickly burying his attention in the delicate pages of the book he's focusing on for the moment. “No. Nothing like that.” He turns a page she knows he can't have read, a gesture she interprets as 'move along'. He has to know by now that she's not so easily deterred.

Lydia decides to wait until she catches him again instead of hounding him about it, slipping the borrowed glasses back on and working through two dozen paragraphs full of absurdly over-complex scientific words. The entire entry on the plant they're trying to give a definitive yes or no on is useless chemical drivel that doesn't address their concerns in favor of talking at length about its relation to other plants in the nightshade family. She shoves it aside in a fit of frustration, dragging over a book with a bright, glossy cover – a psychiatric text. It's not the first strictly medical book she's come on upon in their frantic race through as much relevant information as possible.

When she looks up to ask if he or one of the other Hales had entertained dreams of being a medical doctor, she meets his eyes accidentally, neither of them looking away. “What?” she asks, exhausted enough to lose any guile she might've used.

“I was wondering,” Derek begins.

“Well, that can't be good.”

He takes a slow breath, looking like he might abandon the topic or even the entire library as he presses his palms tight to the tabletop. “Nothing about this. I was thinking that if you like this,” he nods at his own mug full of Cora's tea, “that you might want to grab tea at the witch-owned place right outside town.” His eyes move minutely, searching her face a few inches at a time for a reaction. “After all of this is figured out, I mean.”

Lydia steadfastly calms her heartbeat, knowing he's listening, for once something she can hear as well, pounding loud in her ears. She puts together the pieces – his neutral behavior toward Scott and Stiles, the resolute way he'd powered on to ask her after considering it for hours, if the glances are the timeline she has to go by. He hadn't been sure whether to ask or not, and his smile is slowly returning the longer she looks at him, as if he's expecting good news. Her stomach turns. “I'm not going to fuck you.” Derek stutters, mood broken as if she'd popped a balloon. “That's my final answer, by the way.”

“That's great,” he finally manages. The sarcasm he's usually expert at conveying doesn't come through as well when he's caught off-guard. That just proves her theory that most of his witty comebacks are thought out ahead of time. “Really, that's perfect. But I was asking about tea.”

Lydia laughs for his benefit, though she doesn't see the humor in it. She wants to move on, though, and she's not going to be his rebound for a relationship that never got started to begin with. It's surprising to see him taking this path, sacrificing his own possible happiness to leave Scott and Stiles happy and clueless, but he can walk it with someone else. There's no way of telling how long they'll need to work together or how long Lydia will be in town after she gets paid, and having that kind of mark on her track record isn't ideal. She thinks she could really like Derek, and if there's one thing she's learned from her past, it's that she can't handle converting sex to the friendship she's been growing used to.

He doesn't stop looking at her until Cora comes back in demanding they take a break for dinner, sniffing at Derek and adding a shower to the equation. Lydia stays behind in the library, grateful for the time alone while the food's being cooked. She can't quite put her finger on why she's so unsettled, but she needs a minute to brush it off. Besides, the longer she spends looking for the answer, the sooner she's likely to find it.

When she does go to dinner, Cora and Derek are both sullen, fresh off an actual fight by the looks of things. Their matching scowls make her food sour on her tongue, and she scrapes most of it into the garbage. She retreats to her room instead of going back to the library right away, cleaning her contacts so she has the option to use them later. Fresh clothes are beginning to be a luxury, but she changes anyway, the closest she can get to washing herself clean of this feeling for now. There’s work to be done and no time to spare for sorting out emotions, whether they belong to her or the Hales.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

“We’re not getting anywhere doing anything else, guys. The one thing we figured out ourselves was because we sent people in. There’s no way, if it’s a person, that they can get us all.”

“That’s fine, Allison, but what if it’s not a person? What if we’re dealing with some magical-ass plant and we all come out high as balls if we’re lucky, hospitalized if we aren’t? We’re the only people actually capable of finding a solution here. There’s only so much Scott’s mom can do.”

Stiles and Allison have been bickering since they showed up, and Lydia is under the impression that they’d argued all the way over from the sheriff’s house where she’d picked him up. Lydia’s been careful not to speak up in favor of either side, waiting for Scott to show and make a decision instead. She doesn’t want to be responsible for this decision. She’ll follow through on whichever plan wins out, but she can’t choose it for them.

Even Kira isn’t speaking up on behalf of her fiance for once - wise, considering what’s at stake. Allison thinks they should all go, citing strength in numbers, including the three witches among them. If nothing else, she, Derek, and Cora could shield themselves and drag the others out with them. If there’s nothing waiting for them but a plant gone rogue, the plan is nearly flawless. If it’s a witch, an entire pack and an extra pair of witches is likely enough of a threat to provoke a more severe reaction that some missing memories and a break from reality.

Jordan, unsurprisingly, is advocating for staying out of the preserve entirely. He’s been spouting the official law enforcement lines elbow to elbow with Lydia, drawing unwanted attention in her direction. The longer they wait for their alpha to turn up, the more she can feel them looking elsewhere for an answer. They argue with each other, hand over hand with no one clearly in charge, but Lydia is an outside voice with some vague authority.

It’s actually surprising that none of them are turning to Derek at a time like this. Every good lead they’ve had so far, barring Melissa’s, has come from his experience with the preserve and its natural and magical life. He’s been MIA for most of the night, since Malia showed up with Kira and Liam in tow, the three of them antsy and never quite settling into their seats on the couch. Cora wandered in eating a plain ham and tomato sandwich, once, and Lydia only then realized how far her view of the normal has been skewed by this house. The idea of someone here eating a plain sandwich, whole grain bread or not, is almost absurd.

Jordan is just about to open his mouth again, the nail in the coffin of Lydia’s carefully won silence, when there’s a tap on her shoulder. She does a half-turn, expecting Liam with more questions about Mason, but instead she comes face to chest with Derek. His shirt stretched tight is almost mesmerizing for a moment, leaving her embarrassed by the time she meets his eyes. “Yes?”

“I need to talk to you before Scott gets here.”

So that settles it. It’s Scott after all, not Stiles, which at least gives her some peace of mind about Derek’s taste in men. She follows him into the kitchen then further, out into the greenhouse, where she can see that the sun has set, the blue and purple shadows of night seeping into the skyline. It’s warmer here than inside, where the wolves climate control themselves into false winter. Lydia’s legs are grateful for it, almost making up for the dark soil smearing the soles of her bare feet. Derek faces her head on, shoulders squared like he’s staring down something he may need to fight.

“So, did you change your mind?” They don’t have an awful lot of time to trudge through what she knows and how. Hopefully, they can speed the process along.

“No. The opposite, actually. Look, that obstacle -”

“You can call him by his name, you know. Stiles. He’s more than an inconvenient roadblock. I thought that was the whole problem.”

Derek pauses, tilts his head ever so slightly, mouth open. “You’re interested in Stiles?”

“Interested might be a bit of an exaggeration. I don’t need to have a bleeding heart for him to care what happens to him if you and Scott work out something that doesn’t include him.”

He’s completely lost now, and Lydia starts to wonder if she’s wrong again. If she’s overcorrected and veered toward Scott over Stiles, or underestimated Derek’s feelings for someone else - Kira, maybe. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he tells her guilelessly. “But if you’d just let me talk.”

“Sure. You’d better be quick, though.” She flashes her phone at him, neon numerals blaring the time. “Alan is probably letting Scott off right now.”

“I’m asexual.”

Lydia attempts to pull off the unfazed look, fails, and settles for stunned but accepting. “And you’re worried someone wouldn’t give up sex for you,” she gathers. “Or something along those lines, if you don’t mind sex.”

“I do,” Derek says gravely. “I do mind sex. But you told me the other night that it wasn’t my fault, and there was an attitude I had to give up if I was going to be happy. If I was going to get the Garden.”

Her insides feel like they’ve been doused in dry ice. “Derek...I promise I didn’t mean that you need to ‘get over’ being ace. I know how sexuality works, and I’m less of a bitch than people give me credit for.”” 

“I know,” is the shape and sound that his mouth makes, but the strings of tension that hold him up loosening by the second tell another story. “I need to get over thinking every single person is going to demand that from me. Or even expect. And yesterday, you said...you said you wouldn’t…”

Lydia stares at him. Yesterday, she said she wouldn’t fuck him. Shit. Tumblers are clicking into place, opening up the lock on the things she’s been Not Thinking About so resolutely that she’d almost forgotten them. “Oh, God. Are you telling me you came to me for a reading about me?”

Derek looks suitably ashamed of himself. “I thought you knew. I thought you’d say something.”

“You paid eighty dollars...to flirt with me...and completely failed.” Or I failed, she refuses to add. Should it have been obvious? Does everyone know but her? They’re surrounded by shifters who hear and smell things that exist as intangibles for her. Have people been sitting around waiting for this conversation? Can they hear them now? “So, wait. All of that in the reading. I never knew your mother, or your sister.”

“Neither did anyone else. No one except my sister and the sheriff. I think it was more about me than you. The Banshee. I think about them a lot when something is happening. Something like what’s going on in the preserve, or…”

“Or with me.” It hasn’t sunk in deep enough for her to react in a way that can satisfy Derek. “Are you sure about this?”

“Who did you think I was asking about?”

“Scott,” she answers firmly, not one bit afraid to offer that perfectly sensible guess. “Or Stiles. I couldn’t make up my mind which. You let Stiles drool on your very nice library table. And Scott...is Scott.”

Derek raises a hand, visibly about to protest, when his head snaps around so fast Lydia has whiplash. For a moment, she thinks it's only Scott, but then she hears it. A screaming in the woods.

“Derek, don't,” she says, because she knows. By now, she knows. “You can't go out there, we have to wait for Scott. We can all go when Scott gets here.”

“We've never heard anyone like this. They could be dead before Scott gets here.” He's already on his way to the second door of the greenhouse, the one that leads outside.

“You could die out there if you go by yourself.”

Derek doesn’t spare her a glance on his way out. “It hasn’t hurt me yet. It didn’t hurt Malia. It can’t, or it won’t.” In the last few moments that he’s visible, all she can think is that at least he’s still wearing his boots.

In the next moment, she’s shouting down the house to get him backup.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Lydia is a mess, trailing behind Allison, Cora’s sneakers biting into her toes. There was no time to do more, and by the time Lydia was prepared, Cora had already taken off with the strange lope she’s noticed from the born wolves. So much for a united front; all she has on her side is Stiles’s latent power trapped inside a tangle of human hangups.

She feels more secure with Allison forging ahead of her, daggers in hand and bow slung over her back. Her trunk had been an arsenal, weapons handed off to Stiles and Jordan before she kitted herself out. Lydia had declined a gun, partially because of she has no idea how to shoot one. The rest, admittedly, is the image in her mind of Derek’s face, betraying his anxiety at even the hint of a loaded weapon. Her magic is defense enough; the others have offense covered.

The night is only growing thicker as they step past the barrier into the preserve. She can feel the magic singing tonight - not a happy song, but an alarm. Whatever’s happening, the land knows that its protectors are in peril. That sense of helpfulness Derek has always claimed overcomes her, every footstep falling safely in the near pitch black even as Stiles stumbles alongside. Allison turns her ankle twice and hurries on without faltering.

The scream had sounded so near when it caught Derek’s ear - loud and so crystal clear that Lydia had heard, too. But the farther they go, weaving through the trees and brush, the more Lydia sees that’s impossible. They’re too far in for her to have heard. Maybe even too far for Derek to hear. Yet still there’s nothing but blackness and the stirring of everything alive in the forest around them.

“Can someone hear them? Malia?” Allison leans into a tree, pulling binoculars from seemingly nowhere to scan the terrain ahead of them. “We have to be going in the wrong direction, we're nearly at the creek. I don't even remember crossing the path.”

The light from someone's phone brightens things just enough for them to swivel their heads at each other, everyone seeking an answer from someone else, none of them finding it.

“I hear something!” Malia says, turning back to where they've come from in the half second before Scott comes bounding through the trees.

“What are you doing?” he asks, leaving no room for reply before he tosses his head back and howls, making goosebumps prickle on Lydia's arms at the chill she feels. His eyes glow red for the first time since she's met him, brighter than the small manmade lights around him. The leaves of the trees shake in answer and Lydia, undeniably human, feels the urge to howl and shake, too.

There’s an unnatural stillness in the moments after Scott’s call, all things great and small quieted in the forest. Lydia can see his hands grope for Stiles’s, checking up on him though they’ve done nothing but get themselves lost. She feels suddenly, completely alone in the middle of these friends - this family.

From somewhere to their left (southwest? Lydia can’t be sure), a rumbling starts, a quaking they can feel beneath their feet as it grows. A wail joins it, rising above, too broken to be called a howl at all and cutting the night with an agony so sharp Lydia feels it in her bones. Her feet follow the sound without forethought - the land will carry her to the Hales.

Scott passes her right off, supernatural speed on his side, and Lydia throws her arms ahead of her, all of her will focused on Scott finding his way. The ball of light she conjures is no match for the night - moonless and deep - but it’s enough to guide them forward, the rest of the pack following the light as Lydia sprints as fast as her tiny legs will take her.

When they stumble into the clearing, Lydia nearly weeps, sure they’ve been fooled into returning to the edge of the preserve. Scott’s gasp reorients her, the dim beam from her hands casting an eerie glow on a humongous tree stump crawling with writhing white and green ropes. Cora, forehead scraped, is snapping her jaws at every root or vine that comes near her.

“The nemeton,” Stiles says, so near to Lydia’s ear that she startles, her small light extinguishing itself. Chaos erupts around her, no light but the flaring eyes of her packmates - intense red, icy blue, warm gold, and flame-flicker orange.

“Sever the roots!” Cora is screaming, and Lydia hears the whip of air past her face, catching a flash of silver before it disappears. She stumbles back into Stiles, the edge of a blade catching the underside of her arm, stinging.

Lydia can’t protect everyone at once and she knows it, weighing her options and quickly finding the right voices in the night. Scott, the alpha, the crucial center of the action, and Allison and Stiles, human and vulnerable. She has no idea how the vines work - contact, airborne, mere proximity to their magic - but she drops to her knees and plants her hands in the dirt, begging the ground to help her help itself. The power rises quickly, called to arms, flowing straight through Lydia and into the fray. It catches hold of Stiles first, weaving itself into the magic already waiting inside him to meet it. She can’t see his eyes in the darkness, but she can feel him seeing her, knowing, before he starts hacking away again, thick roots coming away from the stump in clumps.

She covers Allison as well, her aim improving as her head clears from the fog that had already set in. Scott is more of a stretch, her grasp on the magic pouring into her slipping. Just as she thinks it’s too much for one witch, uncontrollable, a cold, long-fingered hand covers hers.

Marin, bruised and paler than Lydia’s seen her, digs their fingers deeper into the soil. “Don’t stop,” she says, voice hoarse - like a throat screamed raw. With the magic spread between them, Lydia blankets the whole pack with the protection the land has offered the Hales and her own intent. Marin conjures a glow bright as headlights, and the roots shrink away, more easily chopped and ripped as they retreat from the light. Lydia watches as they shrivel and rot without their connection to the tree - a nemeton.

“Devil’s snare,” Marin calls over the sounds of growling and slashing. “It hid in the day; it’s been feeding the nemeton.”

Which means they’re just in time. Something that creates a parasite to feed itself isn’t anything Lydia wants growing powerful in the heart of Beacon Hills. There are fewer living roots every second, though, the remaining few lashing out in tactical strikes interrupted by claw and blade, the snap of fangs.

Lydia sags in relief as she watches Allison’s daggers and Liam’s hands slicing through the tiniest of tendrils with every strike, Scott severing the root that disappears into the stump, fat as a python. Kira and Jordan are catching their breath; Malia kneels beside Cora, who’s disoriented from the contact before Lydia arrived. She moves to pull her hand away from Marin’s and can’t, knuckles locked tight around her own.

“Are you okay?” she asks, looking her over in the blinding light for any injuries beyond her bruised arms and throat.

“I’m fine,” she rasps. “Lydia, it’s Derek.”

Lydia’s heart literally stops in her chest, the collection of magic inside her holding its breath as she snaps her head around, searching. He isn’t with his sister where he belongs, or lit by the glow of Parrish setting fire to the two halves of the heart-root.

The edge of the clearing, still partially bathed in shadow, a motionless form. Lydia tugs her fingers free, feeling a crack in the bones that steals her thoughts just long enough the the next thing she remembers is Derek’s bloodless face in her hands as she tries to slap him awake. There’s no pulse when she checks, her ear to his still chest catching no sound. That heartbeat she’d carried inside her as long as it would last has stopped.

“Why isn’t he healing?” she demands. “He’s not even bleeding, why isn’t he healing?”

“It fed from him,” Marin tells her, scratching voice cutting through the rushing sound in Lydia's ears as reality slips away. Derek is dead. His heart – The Lovers – doesn't beat beneath her hands, those green eyes – The Garden, the only happy card – open and blank. She retches, feels a hand on her back and jerks away. She can't focus on anything but her own body still thrumming with magic. Her toes losing feeling inside Cora's shoes. Her heartbeat skyrocketing, her breath quickening until she's lightheaded. The blood from her cut trickling past her elbow, sliding down her wrist in a thick trail before it drips onto Derek's dirty white t-shirt. It blooms into a single red spot, growing as her heart pumps more blood from the wound. It feels like a mockery, the blood in the aftermath, her own living body staining Derek in his bloodless, sterile death.

She focuses on her anger as it rises, watching the tiny spot as it grows with her fury. Fuck this. She doesn’t have to accept this. She’s Lydia fucking Martin, and the blood in her veins - the blood…

“Put him on the tree!” She turns to the pack. “Someone carry him.”

“Lydia, the nemeton-”

“I said,” she spits, bitter as a curse, “put him on the goddamned tree.” Ink-black flames ignite in her palms, burning dark and hot, ten times as strong as the meager light she’d managed.

Scott complies, gingerly lifting Derek’s dead weight into his arms and placing him on the swept-clean surface, those vile roots destroyed as soon as the tree’s magic could no longer protect them. The forest has cannibalized them as they ought to be. Lydia turns to Stiles, nods at the dagger in his hand until he tosses it down beside her. Her blood is long gone from the blade, but she neatly slices her arm open lengthwise and holds it over the crack at the center of the nemeton.

“I’ll die,” she says. “I’ll die if I give it all myself.” Scott and, surprisingly, Malia both make a move to join her before she waves them away. “Cora. I need Cora. Magical blood.”

“She doesn’t even know what’s happening right now, she doesn’t remember-”

“Your brother is dead.” Cora’s blown-wide pupils can’t focus on her face, but her voice can get through loud and clear. “Do you hear me? Your brother is dead, and he’s yours to kill or save.”

“I could-” Stiles begins, but Cora comes on all fours to the makeshift altar. Lydia cuts her, squeezes the first drops out before the wound knits itself closed. She considers the magic involved in making her bleed for days. She's deciding forgiveness is easier to receive than permission when Cora drags her own claws down her forearm, fangs cutting into her lip as she forces the gouges to stay open. Their blood starts to pool in the rings of the tree, to seep into the heart of this hungry, ancient thing.

“What are you doing?” Malia asks, the only person looking on that doesn’t seem to be breaking apart with dread or sorrow.

Lydia lets Cora go, watching her hands circle Derek’s wrists, and smears her knees bloody as she settles herself over him. “I’m going to take back what it stole.”

The incantations are ancient, her tongue curling over sounds long lost and best forgotten. She has nothing - her feathers, her poisons, her skeletons. All of those things she calls on here in the preserve - the land full of life and death, of Derek’s magic and her own.The bones of every rabbit and crow, the sweet betrayal of every berry and flower more deadly than pleasing, they all fuel the forbidden magic she calls on, reckless and angry, finally ready.

She can feel the nemeton resisting her, clinging to the power that it’s been gobbling with its little friend the devil’s snare. She’s stronger, though. Her fury is stronger. Derek’s heart is stronger. This pack is stronger, the strongest she’s felt in her short life. “Fuck you,” she mutters to herself. It isn’t part of the spell, but it invigorates something powerful inside her, whole body engulfed in the black flame that eats the nemeton’s power without so much as singeing Derek.

She plunges her grasping hand into the gap at the nemeton’s core, into the pool of their blood and the concentration of magic ready to be yanked free. She links her free hand with Cora’s at Derek’s wrist, the pair of them a conduit, and pulls.

Derek doesn’t shoot up like a rocket, wide-eyed and alive. His long lashes flutter. His mouth wets, lips parting, drawing in a weak breath. Lydia holds on, clinging as long as she can to the wild thrash of magic as old as this world itself.

He opens his eyes, pulse jumping to life beneath her thumb, and promptly faints.

Lydia collapses over him, flames doused in blood and relief, her ear to Derek’s chest as his heart beats slow but steady, a thud that knocks at her and asks to be let in.

“Let’s go home,” she says to no one in particular, and then she sleeps. 

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

“Lie down,” Lydia gripes, slapping Derek’s hand away from small knife he’s been reaching for. “I can make this batch myself. It’s small. Cora helped with all of the hard work when you were still sleeping off your hangover.” They never call it what it was, at least not yet, and that has gone over well so far. “I don’t need your help.”

Derek heaves the most dramatic sigh ever heard past the seventh grade, throwing his legs back onto Lydia’s couch. “It’s been two weeks. I’m fine now. I can handle cutting up some roots and crushing bulbs.”

Lydia tsks at him, shaking her head. “We’ll see what Melissa says later. She’s coming by after her shift finishes.”

They should probably give poor nurse McCall a rest after the work she’s done for them, first researching and then administering the salves and potions that Cora and Lydia worked out together in the days following the incident in the preserve. Mason, missing a few weeks of his life and slightly underfed, is up and about again, excitedly seeking Marin out to ask about what’s happened to him, to the others. She’ll be a good mentor for him, encouraging curiosity but keeping him in check, hopefully not letting him wander around deep in the wood alone. 

There are other things they don’t talk about, besides what happened to Derek. No one speaks a word about Lydia’s magic, about the righteous fury she’d thrown at the obstacle in her way. She’s lucky Derek, with his terrible sense of humor, hasn’t started to tease her over denying that the Death card is such a dire omen. When he did have the cards in reach, the first time he’d visited after he woke up, he’d simply shuffled through blind, his fingers coming to rest on The Banshee. He holds it up to her, smiling, wordless.

Lydia recognizes the image now - the flaming hair blown back by the force of magic, cloaked in a blackness made of flame instead of fabric. She did always say that the card was the conjunction of death and women. What surprises her is that Derek must remember now, that moment of her above him in the deep magic, struggling to keep her head above. He must’ve seen her there in that single second, his open eyes locked to hers as she pulled him from the next world back to their own. He watched her say no to his own death and slam the door behind her.

What they do talk about, though, is everything they never got to talk about when life was all mystery all the time. Derek likes sports and Lydia loathes them; Lydia has subscriptions to Cosmo and, guiltily, Seventeen - she’d never had the heart to cancel. They both prefer the mountains to the beach and, obviously, tea over coffee. Derek can’t bake. Lydia can’t, either, but it’s all chemistry in the end, and she’s sure she can figure it out. They spend long hours trading odds and ends about their life, all light topics, while Lydia works and he rests.

They haven’t said anything yet, about what Lydia assumes will now be her ‘before’, the same way Derek has his own. If he remembers it at all, he’s been quiet on the subject, nothing more than soft smiles and kinder words. “If you don’t watch out, I’ll pull a Misery,” she tells him. “You’re much sweeter bedridden. I might want to keep you.” She can actually see him blushing, skin bare where Cora had shaved him clean while he was still out. He looks so much younger like this, her age instead of his own, and it’s both lovely and strange.

“Melissa,” he’s groaning now, “doesn’t get off work until seven. And she’ll stay for ages. She loves you almost as much as she loves Kira.”

“I’m not seeing a problem,” she tells him. “Unless you’re going to be ready for a nap. And even then…”

“Even then?”

“Your garden will survive one night without you around. We’ll send someone - not Mason - to take care of anything that needs seeing to.”

She keeps focused on her work, because she doesn’t want to see his reaction before she hears it. Derek’s face has made a habit of not following rules, and she’d rather avoid getting any wrong impressions before he makes up his mind. 

“You’re asking me to sleep over?”

“How about...I’m inviting you to a sleepover. That’s different, right? I remember sleepovers. Hot drinks and secrets and less sleep than you’d think, by the name.” 

He’s quiet, the only sound in the room the rhythmic slap of her knife against the wooden cutting board. “I don’t know,” he says slowly.” Her heart sinks, wondering if what he’d seen has scared him off after all. Not everyone can handle what she’s done, even if he is grateful for his life. “I mean, my house is bigger, and I actually have food in my fridge.” He laughs at her when she throws a pebble from the table’s decorative stone bowl at him, shielding his face. “Seriously, though. You want me to stay here?”

“For tonight,” she agrees. “On the couch, if you want. My bed is big, though, and since we definitely got through that obstacle…”

“The couch is fine,” he says, but it isn’t the tight, pressed voice she’s come to associate with his worry. “I’m already here anyway. Walking to the bedroom sounds like an obstacle right now.”

“I told you that you shouldn’t be up and about.” She sticks her tongue out at him, happy to make him smile. Just to let him know she’s not upset. She doesn’t expect anything of him, and she never will. The thought of him sleeping beside gives her a warm, golden feeling, the sort that makes her feel like her bright could be as strong as her dark, but if he doesn’t want that, now or ever, she’ll live. “You can pass me those papers, though, or I’m going to end up spilling on them.”

Derek frowns as he handles them, so recently printed he can still smell the ink on them. “What’s this?”

She hums, pulling them from his hands and tucking them into the folder in her work bag. “My lease papers. Gotta get those handled soon.” This time she does watch him filter through expressions until he finds the one he wants, resolute and pleased.

“Good. Beacon Hills needs more witches.”

**Author's Note:**

> Derek briefly dies in the climax of the fic, but is quickly brought back (perfectly fine minus exhaustion, no zombie-esque repercussions).


End file.
